Photography by Sandra Dyas

Sandy's new book, Down to the River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians was published in 2007 by the Iowa Press. Sandy moved to Iowa City in 1987 and began documenting the area's vibrant live music scene, with its distinctive combination of folk, blues, roots/Americana, and rock sounds.

The sixty photos in Down to the River capture her twenty years of photographing live music venues and shooting portraits of musicians in and around the city, resulting in a collection of images as compassionate and honest as the music itself. Sandy's photographs present both the sweaty intensity of live performances and the more contemplative moments of individual portraits.

They are complemented by an essay by Chris Offutt and a companion CD with eighteen tracks by Iowa's finest singer/songwriters, including Dave Moore, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, David Zollo, and Pieta Brown.

The book extends Sandy's previous work which offers an antithesis of the shiny America we see on television, as it commemorates the oddness of life, its beauty and its honesty. Hope and hopelessness are on-going themes in her photographs.

Nevertheless, she has used teaching to inspire change in and outside the classroom. A MacArthur Grant recently allowed her to work with women of all ages, who were looking of ways to tell their own stories through video.