Picturing the world in black and white
By Sasha Paulsen
Photographer Vi Bottaro opened her first show in Yountville in more than a decade with a reception at Cornerstone Cellars on March 21, 2025.
Known for her striking black and white photographs, which call to mind the work of Ansel Adams, Bottaro’s works, now on display at Cornerstone, have been inspired by the natural world of landscapes as varied Texas Hill Country, Yosemite, Italy and Cambodia.
The new show comprises studies of three locations: her native Vietnam, her adopted home, Napa Valley, and Death Valley.
“My Death Valley images are relatively new compared to my Napa and Vietnam images,” Bottaro said. An artist friend, she said, described these photographs as “a beautiful symphony of movement and light,” but the stunning interplay of light and shadow in these studies of the desert’s shimmering dunes also evokes a mesmerizing sense of motion, as much a dance as a symphony.
Photography was not Bottaro’s first career. Arriving in the U.S. from Vietnam in 1970, she studied biology on a scholarship at the University of Houston. She went onto specialize in nuclear medicine technology at Baylor College of Medicine, and then from 1976 until 2000, she worked at Baylor, managing the nuclear medicine department.
That year final year at Baylor, she made surprising career shift. She became a professional photographer.
“I wanted to change careers to do something that is closer to my nature. Medicine is what I was trained and learned. Art is what is built in me.
“I was mostly self-taught,” she said. “I wanted to do landscape photography, so I bought three books that were written by Ansel Adams: ‘The Camera,’ ‘The Negative’ and ‘The Print.’ I learned his techniques and experimented in the darkroom until I mastered the techniques. Aesthetics is what is built in me.”
Once she started photography, she said, “It seemed like it had always been a part of me.”
By 2005, she had developed a thriving practice in Texas when she decided to move to Napa Valley. “I fell in love with the beautiful landscapes of Napa. So, I decided to move here to do landscape photography. And I photographed all over California.”
She first lived on Mt. Veeder before moving to Rutherford. As she embarked on studies of the land and the people of wine country, she became the photographer in residence for Chandon winery for seven years.
While on Mt. Veeder she captured the dormant vineyards in a rare snowstorm in 2006 in a photograph that was included in a San Francisco exhibit, “Visionary Female Bay Area Artists.”
“The black and white photography of Vi Bottaro are studies in contrast,” the exhibition curator, Saiko Matsumura wrote. “They are both highly realistic – over to the medium – and at the same time both distinctly surreal…she captures a sense of the overwhelming power that transcends the world of nature and man.”
Two of her major solo shows inspired by Napa Valley were “Migrant Farm Workers in Napa” for the University of San Francisco School of Law, and “Napa Valley: The People and the Landscape,” a show at the Napa Valley Museum.
In 2011, she made her first return visit to Vietnam. After rediscovering this world, she subsequently led yearly tours to her homeland that focused on the culinary scene, as well as arts and photography, while also teaching photography at Napa Valley College.
She moved back to Texas in 2017, to Austin, where her son lives, but by 2022, the Napa Valley had drawn her back. This time she settled in Yountville. She announced her retirement from commercial photography and devoted her time to designing a new home and garden at Rancho de Napa.
“I love Yountville,” she said. “There’s so much going on here, and you can walk everywhere.”
Retirement, however, did not mean she gave up photography. “Now that I no longer do commercial photography, I focus on the landscapes,” she said. “I love the beauty, the mystery and the romance of nature and the landscape.”
And, Bottaro said, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to collaborate with Cornerstone Cellars, a short stroll from her new home.
The tasting room, she decided, is a great match for her art. “They are the nicest people. And the wine is very good.”
Cornerstone Cellars, founded in 1991, opened a tasting room in Yountville 2012. Their website sums up their philosophy: “For three decades, we’ve been stubbornly distinctive, and moving forward, we don’t see that changing. We’ve seen trends come and go. We’ve seen nature do exactly what it wants to do. We’re still here. We love what we do.”
And the same, perhaps, can be said of Vi Bottaro.
The Cornerstone Cellars tasting room is at 6505 Washington St. and the show will remain on display through December of 2025. To view more of Vi Bottaro’s work, visit www.vibottaro.com.
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