DM Witman by Amy Parrish

Copy Editor: Nicole Sharkey

Along the St. George River in Midcoast Maine, DM Witman steps out of her studio and into the marshy banks that crest and fall through a daily course of tides. It’s here where this former field biologist has collected specimens for Index (2018), a series of photograms, labeled with scientific notes, yet infused with delicate and melancholic expression of the gum bichromate process on Rives BFK paper and at times gilt with various golds and platinum. For this environmentally conscious artist and educator, it becomes a way “to process grieving around the impending loss we are facing as the result of climate change.”

Having long explored the natural world, Melt (2015) was Witman’s first foray into climate-centered art where she used the most essential qualities of the photographic medium to convey a message. Over the course of several months of experimentation and research, Witman printed a series of images which were not fully fixed to paper and faded over periods of time; alluding to the disappearance of once snow-laden landscapes. In one phase of this project, funded by a grant through The Kindling Fund, Witman mailed a series of 200 unfixed postcards to a blind sampling of Maine residents, leaving random beneficiaries to face a hauntingly familiar choice of preserving environments sealed within a light-sensitive envelope, or to open a Pandora’s box which would directly lead to the image’s deterioration.

Having exhibited in two separate shows at Klompching Gallery in New York this year, Witman is still releasing images from her newest edition of Arctic Elegy (2019). In this work Witman paints a dire warning upon photographs made from William Pierce’s Arctic images during an 1864 expedition. Earlier this summer, amid the labor-intensive process of printing and painting this work, I visited Witman’s home to see some of the progress firsthand as we delved deeper into conversation about Arctic Elegy and her creative practice. Here is a portion of our ongoing communications, edited for publication:

PARRISH: So, tell me about where you’re at right now: which historic processes are you working with at the moment and what role do they play in how you approach this work?

WITMAN: Currently, I am just finishing the painting of Elegy. The images are printed using the salted-paper process. I then hand paint a slurry of watercolor pigment, gum arabic, and dichromate over the photographs to achieve the desired effect. So- two historic processes! The base for the works comes from an archive from an expedition to the Arctic, and are believed to be some of the first pictures of icebergs. I found the archive of images first, and later determined how I would print them. Through many experiments, I found the pigment that worked best to achieve the “red-orange” color I was looking for. The process enables me to communicate the idea, and I love working this way - slow, tactile, with intent.

PARRISH: “With intent…” A lot of thought clearly gets put into your work and intense research seems be a vital part of the process. I heard someone accurately say, “I love the way she thinks.” The work is both visual and cerebral and I’m curious about why, or how, this is so important to you?

WITMAN: This work is important to me because I wanted to continue to work in the realm of climate change - this is where all my thinking and making has resided. I wanted the viewer to be able to read the photograph from across the room without text, for the red to provoke a visceral response, even without words. As I worked, I have thought about it as a color of distress or warning, the image that is of water in the entire square, reminds me of nautical flags.

PARRISH: And I think that speaks to another crucial element in this body of work: you are using thought and science, yet also eliciting emotional reactions.

Arctic Elegy seems to be in close partnership with your earlier project, Melt. Can you touch on this a bit?  

WITMAN: The series Arctic Elegy ties in to Melt, in that it allows me to continue to explore the subject but in a new way. Melt was my first project to deal directly with climate change. I travelled the world via the internet and captured satellite imagery, which I then printed as salted-paper photographs. I knew that if I did not fix the images, they would fade when exposed to UV light. This allows me to present the images in a non-fixed ephemeral state to deal with the idea of disappearing landscapes, which are changing due to warming. 

PARRISH: To give readers more insight, can you talk a bit about how your background correlates with your current practice?

WITMAN: I have a B.S. degree in Environmental Science and worked as a field biologist for many years. I loved learning how to identify flora and fauna, how to work my way through a dichotomous key, and to know the names of things. I love trying to understand systems, and how things work - and this is all still true. At one point in time, my science work and my art were disparate. It was really after graduate school that I found that I could integrate all of my interests, my passions; it could all feed me and my creative practice.

PARRISH: Is trying to understand systems what compels you to create?

WITMAN: I have a need to express ideas and emotions, communicate issues, and work through problems. I have a need to communicate; it’s an internal thing I guess.

PARRISH: And where does the inspiration for these ideas draw from?

WITMAN: Great question.  My inspiration comes from all the big and small things around me. It’s the St. George River which is adjacent to my home and studio. It’s all the trees I see, the fields, the ocean. It’s the reports I read in journals and the research I gather to understand. All of it is what inspires me to work.

During a wave of headline-grabbing heat, the St. George River offered reprieve. I was able to climb down the banks that inspired Witman’s work and watch boulders emerge from the water during low tide then discreetly slip back beneath the surface as the Atlantic swelled. A plant’s spindly fingers tangled around my leg underwater, leading me to ponder if this was a survival tactic for holding firm in an intertidal zone. Over in a pocket of still water shadowed by trees, hundreds of tiny white blossoms floated like stars as insects skated upon a black pane of glass. Watching, I reflected on an earlier series of Witman’s work where slugs were released onto sensitized paper, painting a celestial ballet upon the page. Any direction I turned, inspiration became clear and limitless. Witman’s mission to draw attention towards rapid changes in the biosphere is in direct correlation to protecting microenvironments like her own backyard. From melting snowcaps to this place where river meets sea, everything is connected. ☽

To keep learning and view more work, visit the artist’s website at www.dmwitman.com or follow @dm_witman on Instagram.

About the Author

Amy Parrish is an internationally-exhibited artist exploring word and form. She served as the Director of Operations and instructor for The Light Space; a program offering photography training to young women affected by the commercialized sex trade and to staff members of anti-trafficking organizations. In between long-term projects in India and Thailand, she has focused on her craft in Midcoast Maine, traveled extensively across the US, and currently writes reviews for LensCulture, a global platform for contemporary photographers.

Through the previous decade, Parrish worked as an award-winning portrait photographer, teaching other professionals within the industry through conferences, workshops, and other outlets. Her studio practice was filmed for two seasons of Photovision and her work was recognized as “Best in Portrait” in WPPI’s international photography competition.

In 2014 her focus shifted from commercial work to very personal, hand-processed image-making. She incorporated found objects, sculpture and 19th-century historic processes, brushing emulsions onto paper and exposing them to light. Her fine art imagery has been selected for exhibition in venues such as the Huntington Museum of Art, received the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, as well as attaining recognition in several other juried selections and publications.