A culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain focuses on the tenuous relationship between industries reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Timber and salmon are the bedrock of a regional Northwest identity, but the environmental impact of these industries is increasingly at odds with the contemporary ideal of sustainability.
Published on the occasion of the 2009/2010 exhibition at Henry Art Gallery, Seattle.

“When I was young, my family would hunt for mushrooms in the forests of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. Some days we would spend afternoons along the shallows of a river watching salmon fight their way to spawning grounds upstream. These were the icons of the region: forest and salmon, pillars of Northwest identity. These photographs address the complicated relationship between the region’s landscape, the industries that rely upon natural resources, and the communities they support.  Sawdust Mountain is a melancholy love letter of sorts, a personal reflection on the region's past, its hardscrabble identity, and the turbulent future it must navigate.”
- Eirik Johnson