ARTIST INFO

BENJAMIN DIMMITT
Fairview, NC

PHOTOGRAPHY | Landscape photography

Penland Affiliation | Penland Instructor 2022

Artist Information | Studio artist, educator; education: Eckerd College BA, International Center of Photography, Santa Reparata Graphic Art Centre, City & Guild Arts School, Santa Fe Photographic Workshop; exhibitions: Asheville Art Museum (NC), Southeast Museum of Photography (FL), Center For Photographic Art (CA), Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), Photo+Sphere Festival (NC), Ogden Museum of Southern Art (LA), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX), Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FL), International Center of Photography (NY)

Artist Bio | Benjamin Dimmitt was born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He moved to NYC after college and taught at the International Center of Photography for 12 years. He moved to the Asheville area in 2014 and began a long term project photographing the impact of global warming and sea level rise on Florida wetlands. The University of Georgia Press will publish a book of that project in the fall of 2023.

Artist Statement | I am a native Floridian and have been living elsewhere for more than forty years. The Florida of my youth had abundant unspoiled areas that I took for granted and that have since vanished. Florida is now the third most populous state in our country with a thousand people a day moving there. The remaining wilderness has been put at risk by unfettered growth, rising seas and irresponsible resource management.

In 2004, I began photographing the wetlands, palm hammocks and low-lying forests in a process of exploring, reacquainting myself and finally reinterpreting the unique and fragile beauty there. These landscapes are evolving and may never again appear as they have in my lifetime. I have felt a need to reconnect with the places that are part of my essence and that I have lived apart from for so many years.

Primitive Florida is not a place of grandeur and majesty. I seek out instead lush and fecund places where land merges with water to photograph, as this is, for me, the primary and essential Florida. I am most attracted to scenes of animated and layered growth that exhibit the urge for survival and the persistence of life.

Technical Information | Black & white photography using film. Selenium-toned gelatin silver prints and archival pigment prints.