An Unflinching Look: Chassahowitzka Saltwater IntrusionPhotographs by Benjamin DimmittThrough June 11. Clayton Galleries. 4105 S. Macdill Ave. 813-831-3753. Claytongalleries.net.
The lush, densely packed palmettos and gnarly cypress knees of Florida’s swamps don’t always get the respect they deserve, overlooked in favor our beaches. But Benjamin Dimmitt’s solo show at the Clayton Galleries, An Unflinching Look: Chassahowitzka Saltwater Intrusion, demands attention: His black-and-white photography shows the slow destruction of our marshlands.
On the right side of the gallery, some of Dimmitt’s earlier photographs show a Florida swamp bursting with life. When he took them, saltwater had already begun overtaking fresh, but he could continue paddling upstream to find unadulterated land. In more recent photos, he couldn’t keep turning his back.
“Saltwater began creeping up into the pristine spring-fed creeks of Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge several years ago. What was lush, semi-tropical forest has become a barren plain of grasses relieved only by palms and dead trees. I began photographing this devastation in 2014 in an effort to reckon with the ecosystem loss and to understand what my native Florida has become and why,” Dimmitt, who grew up in Clearwater, says.
The most documentary-style works are the three diptychs matted and framed together: “Upriver,” “Downriver” and “Cabin.” Explicitly juxtaposed photographs, taken years apart, compare the landscapes over time and make one’s heart sink. The cabin series makes a lasting impression; it hardly looks like the same place. In the “before” photo (1987), a thick canopy of vegetation surrounds and camouflages a little shack; the “after” photo (2015) shows the wooden structure stripped of its landscape, leaving it exposed.
Though I was initially disappointed in not being able to compare the colors of the rich, green surviving bushes with the browns of dying trees, the power of these stark black-and-white photos lies in their lack of color. Black-and-white photography links these landscapes to historical war photos, the palms serving as Dimmitt’s fallen heroes.
“Skip’s Canopy” is portrait-like and striking in its sparseness. Dimmitt crops the picture so that we just see the busts of palm trees from below, with the sky as a backdrop. Some palms still maintain their glory, but most lack all their fronds: Their boots shoot upward like amputated limbs. It’s telling when palms, the most tolerant of trees to saltwater, finally succumb.
“Palms & Yuccas, Unnamed Island” is a frantic scene, reminiscent of a scene of a battle. Instead of bullets flying through the air, the hard lines from dead palm branch spikes shoot through the foreground, creating a busy, zigzagging pictorial space. The standing palms on the left-hand side veer off to the left, emulating a rocket explosion with the bursts of leaves still attached to the top.
The strength of the compositions varies; Dimmitt shoots most of his photographs from a canoe. Once he finds his scene, de drops his anchor, dries his hands and grabs his camera — by which time he’s drifted several yards from where he was. As a result, his photographs are fleeting, which adds to the temporality of the lushness we assume will always characterize Florida’s landscape.
When Dimmitt paddles the Chassahowitzka, fallen trees often block the path, as shown in “Tidal Creek” and “Fallen Tree.” The photographer captures palm trees in a slow decent toward the river at cockeyed angles, with some already fallen and others fully submerged.
Saltwater intrusion isn’t out of our control. Because the Southwest Florida Water Management District claimed the wetlands could survive with less fresh water, they allowed Tampa Bay Water to pump water from the aquifer (upon which the Chassahowitzka — and other rivers and springs — depend) to large-scale developments. Rising seawater creeps up the rivers to displace it.
“My approach has not been to photograph the swamp in a dry, dispassionate manner,” Dimmitt says. “I am too close to this landscape. Instead, I have interpreted the destruction in a more personal, subjective way, using my sadness and anger to help describe what has become of this delicate place. My intention has been to portray the landscape with respect, nuance and beauty.”
Dimmitt has captured the narrative of the civil war we’ve waged against our own land and placed it before our eyes.
Broadly speaking, saltwater intrusion refers to the invasion of salty — or saltier — water into places previously dominated by freshwater. Excess groundwater extraction can draw salty water up from the lower Floridan aquifer, or (in coastal areas) it can invite salty water from beneath the ocean to push inland, taking the place of extracted freshwater. Saltwater is beginning to invade surface environments along the coast — especially Florida’s Gulf coast. This leads to ecological change in many coastal environments — change that is now rapid enough for us to see in our lifetime. —Dr. Chris Meindl, director of the Florida Studies Program and an associate professor of geography at the University of South Florida St. Pete
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 2, 2016.
