This extreme vertical 18-by-57-inch panorama documents Fateh Sagar Lake during drought—a work closely related to the “Dry Lake, Nehru Park” piece in the series but potentially capturing different perspective or moment of the same environmental crisis. The nearly five-foot height and narrow width create the Sacred Architectures series’ most extreme vertical emphasis, the constricted format suggesting water scarcity while towering composition documents the drained lake’s exposed infrastructure.

Created in 2004, the work captures Udaipur’s artificial lake system at a moment of environmental stress—the “City of Lakes” experiencing water shortage that transforms tourist attraction into crisis landscape. Fateh Sagar, constructed in 1678 by Maharana Jai Singh, represents Mewar rulers’ water engineering: damming seasonal streams to create permanent reservoirs providing water supply, agricultural irrigation, and recreational amenity.

Nehru Park occupies an island within Fateh Sagar Lake, normally accessible only by boat, its isolation creating park atmosphere distinct from mainland urban development. During severe drought, the lake drains sufficiently to expose the island’s connection to lakebed, the normally water-surrounded park becoming landlocked as water retreats. The extreme vertical format documents this transformation—what should be horizontal water surface becomes vertical void, the empty lake bed visible from upper embankment to distant shores.

The title’s “Dry Lake” emphasis announces environmental crisis rather than scenic tourism—Udaipur’s romantic palace imagery subverted by water shortage threatening the artificial lake system sustaining the city. The extreme narrowness serves environmental message: constricted composition suggesting scarcity, the format itself embodying drought’s constraint.

Smithsonian Institution’s acquisition of related work from this documentation session (via the Katz-Huyck collection, 2018) places Hayashi’s environmental crisis photography within America’s premier museum network, recognizing documentation extending beyond aesthetic architectural photography to encompass sacred landscape vulnerability and climate themes.