September 8 – October 15, 2023
Reception for the Artists – September 8, 6 to 8pm
Jason Lindsey Artist Talk – September 21, 2023 7pm Eastern
Bremner Benedict Artist Talk – September 19, 2023 7pm Eastern
Ceding Ground is a view of our changing climate through the eyes of six photographers, all grasping with the question of loss of habitat, groundwater and climate change. Simon Norfolk’s two series, When I am laid in Earth and Shroud focus on retreating ice in Africa and Europe. Jason Lindsey’s Cracks in the Ice is a metaphorical and scientific look at glaciation. Camille Seaman’s Melting Away exposes us to habitat loss for the penguins of Antartica. Hidden Waters is Bremner Benedict’s look at the water crisis in the Western United States. Ellen Konar & Steve Goldband expose us to climate change through the study of tree rings in Cut Short. Outside the museum we have Dawn Watson’s Alchemy, an abstract look at the elements that surround us and Ville Kansanen’s site specific installations connecting the museum to the surroundings engaging Judkin’s Pond as a partner in his vision to talk about the fragility of aquatic resources.
Simon Norfolk | When I am Laid In Earth & Shroud
Simon Norfolk is a landscape photographer whose work over twenty years has been themed around a probing and stretching of the meaning of the word ‘battlefield’ in all its forms. As such, he has photographed in some of the world’s worst war-zones and refugee crises, but is equally at home photographing supercomputers used to design military systems or the test-launching of nuclear missiles. Time’s layeredness in the landscape is an ongoing fascination of his.
His work has been widely recognised: he has won The Discovery Prize at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2005; The Infinity Prize from The International Center of Photography in 2004; and he was winner of the European Publishing Award, 2002. In 2003 he was shortlisted for the Citibank Prize now known as the Deutsche Börse Prize and in 2013 he won the Prix Pictet Commission. He has won multiple World Press Photo and Sony World Photography awards.
He has produced four monographs of his work including ‘Afghanistan: Chronotopia’ (2002) which was published in five languages; ‘For Most Of It I Have No Words’ (1998) about the landscapes of genocide; and ‘Bleed’ (2005) about the war in Bosnia. His most recent is ‘Burke + Norfolk; Photographs from the War in Afghanistan.’ (2011).
He has work held in major collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Getty in Los Angeles as well as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Wilson Centre for Photography and the Sir Elton John Collection. His work has been shown widely and internationally from Brighton to Ulaanbaatar and in 2011 his ‘Burke + Norfolk’ work was one of the first ever photography solo shows at Tate Modern in London.
He has been described by one critic as ‘the leading documentary photographer of our time. Passionate, intelligent and political; there is no one working in photography that has his vision or his clarity.’ He is currently running at a pretty nifty Number 44 on ‘The 55 Best Photographers of all Time. In the History of the World. Ever. Definitely.’
Simon Norfolk’s Shroud was made in collaboration with Klaus Thymann of Project Pressure, “a charity with a mission to visualize climate change.”
Camille Seaman | Melting Away : A Penguins Life
Camille Seaman was born in 1969. She graduated in 1992 from the State University of New York at Purchase, where she studied photography with Jan Groover and John Cohen. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic Magazine, Italian Geo, German GEO, TIME, The New York Times Sunday magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men’s Journal, Seed, Camera Arts, Issues, PDN, and American Photo among many others, She frequently leads photographic workshops. Her photographs have received many awards including: a National Geographic Award, 2006; and the Critical Mass Top Monograph Award, 2007. She is a TED Senior Fellow, Stanford Knight Fellow as well as a Cinereach Filmmaker in Residence Fellow.
Camille Seaman strongly believes in capturing photographs that articulate that humans are not separate from nature.
Bremner Benedict | Hidden Waters
Benedict’s projects center on the role that landscape plays in the human experience – on unseen, ordinary places – what they reveal about our attitudes and relationship to the natural world and the potential consequences of what we choose to not to value. Her focus for the last six years has been on drought climate change and overuse of water in the arid landscapes in North America.
Benedict’s images are at Fidelity Art Boston; Center for Photography, Tucson; Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; New Mexico Museum of Art; Decordova Museum of Art and Sculpture; Harvard’s Fogg Museum; and George Eastman Museum. Solo exhibitions include Florida Museum of Photographic Arts; Griffin Museum of Photography at Stoneham; Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX; and Philadelphia Print Center. Hidden Waters archive resides in the Museum of Art & Environment, Reno Nevada; Benedict is a member of Blue Earth Alliance and the Long Now.
Awards include: CENTER Santa Fe- Project Launch Award, Juror’s Award, Karen Haas Juror, Conversations with the Land, Center for Fine Art Photography; Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist; Critical Mass Top 200, 2019; the FENCE, New England; Legacy Award, Griffin Museum of Photography; two Puffin Foundation Grants; artist residencies: Museum of Northern Arizona, Joshua Tree Highlands Residency, Shoshone Artist Residency; solo exhibitions: Florida Museum of Photography, Griffin Museum of Photography – Stoneham, Hess Gallery, Texas Women’s University, and Philadelphia Print Center.
Jason Lindsey | Cracks in the Ice
Jason Lindsey is a Midwest-based photographer and filmmaker working to interpret science and the human impacts and relationship to the natural world. Lindsey considers himself a poetic activist using his art to drive social change.
Lindsey received his BA in Fine Art from Illinois State University. Lindsey has a 20-year career in advertising and editorial photography with a continued focus on Fine Art Photography. Photo assignments have taken him from the jungles of the Amazon, the Glaciers of Iceland, the Wilds of Alaska, and the waters of Belize. Lindsey is currently the Artist in Residence at Prairie Rivers Network and has photographs in a United Nations Climate Change and The Climate Museum exhibit in New York City and another United Nations exhibit in Paris.
He has been featured in PDN, Communication Arts, and Archive Magazine and was named one of the top 200 Advertising Photographers Worldwide in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Lindsey’s book “Windy City Wild: Chicago’s Natural Wonders” was published by Chicago Review Press.
Amber Crabbe | I Dreamed We Could Stand Still
Exploration of the natural world and my desire to document its dynamism drives my photographic practice and draws me to volcanic and geothermal areas. There I can celebrate places of resilience that continue to reject human manipulation, in spite of the dramatic changes currently being imposed on our climate. Although it’s possible to build a boardwalk across a steaming hot spring or construct a roadway that facilitates access to an active volcanic area, the elements in these places refuse to be constrained. Their stubbornness soothes me and represents small victories in the face of massive global change. My moving photographs exemplify how I escape into these otherworldly places and bear witness to their ultimately unknowable power and beauty.
Amber Crabbe holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2018 she was awarded a position in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Fellows Program and in 2012 she received the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Contemporary Art Award. She has participated in numerous curated and juried exhibitions at venues throughout the U.S., including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Berkeley Art Center, SF Camerawork, SomArts, the Pacific Film Archive, Gallery Route One, Rayko Photo Center, the Smith Anderson North Gallery, the Gray Loft Gallery, and the Whatcom Museum. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.
