The Southeast Museum of Photography presents a fine-art photography show featuring breathtaking landscape photographs of the Pacific Coast Highway, fresh water springs of Central and Northern Florida, and the rugged natural landscapes of the expansive Texas plains. Kirk Crippens, Sharon Harper, and Benjamin Dimmitt each present a portfolio of photographs that capture these locales of the American landscape. This exhibition explores climate change not as a primary element of the composition, but as a now inescapable feature of landscape photography.
“This is a fine-art landscape photography exhibition, with contributions from some of the most talented photographers in the country—they are not eco-warriors with cameras, they are not photojournalists, their work is not about sensationalism nor do they have political agendas apparent in their photos. In landscape photography, climate change is now a feature and no longer just a bug.”
James Pearson for LENSCRATCH Fine Art Photography Daily
KIRK CRIPPENS
Crippens most recent project, Going South—published by Schilt in 2019—will debut at the Southeast Museum of Photography. This portfolio of images was created in the days following the closure of California’s section of State Route 1 due to heavy mudslides. Crippens hiked into Big Sur--as all vehicle traffic was forbidden--and with his large format camera he began to document portions of the road and the surrounding wilderness free of human interaction. The results of his excursion are breathtakingly beautiful imagery, a very distinct light and tone, and an almost apocalyptic sense of loneliness.
SHARON HARPER
Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University refers to her most recent work as “geological surveys” with a focus on the aftermath.
Some Observations on Movements of the Earth invites one to read movements of the earth. Implicit within the work is a call to shape our lives in dialogue with the dynamic changes of the living environment. The project records phenomenas that form within a geological time-frame, as well as faster processes such as earth-quakes, monsoons, landslides, forest fires, and coastal erosion. In the midst of the Anthropocene, this record asks that we consider living proactively in tune with environment, respecting the risks it presents.
BENJAMIN DIMMITt
For over a decade Dimmitt has photographed the landscape surrounding a freshwater spring in the wilderness of Central Florida. Through this time Dimmitt’s photographs have chronicled the landscape’s turn from freshwater spring to salt water marsh—a result of rising sea levels. Dimmitt’s work has a feeling similar to classical paintings—poised, with sharp contrasts of tone, and dramatic emphasis on shape and line. The dying palm trees, slowly slumping over and falling are reminiscent of wounded soldiers depicted in classical works chronicling the fall of Rome.
