By Suzanne Révy
The earth holds many secrets. Humanity leaves its traces and marks in the forests, the mountains, the lakes and the prairies of the world. For eons, these landscapes have shaped civilizations and now, there are signs everywhere that our industrialized civilizations are changing the landscape. Three recently published books grapple with the outsized impacts that human activity has had on the earth. Two of them are monographs: An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt and Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel, and the third is a retrospective exhibition catalog, An My Lê: Between Two Rivers by Roxana Marcoci.

“Upper Baird Creek, 2009” (left) and “Leaning Palm, Spring Creek, 2011” From the book An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt,(Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Each of these books take a long view, but An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands feels the most pressing. In 1977, Florida native Benjamin Dimmitt started kayaking in the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, located on the Big Bend section of Florida’s Gulf Coast about seventy miles north of Tampa. By 1988, he began regularly photographing on his trips. Once the home to old growth forests, the lumber industry felled most of it back in the early 1920’s. A ghost forest remained, and it became a lush and verdant wildlife refuge in the 1940’s that attracted birders, boaters and anglers.

“Upriver, 1987” (left) “Upriver, 2021” from the book An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“View Upstream 2004” (upper left) “View Upstream, 2022” (lower left) “View Downstream, 2004” (upper left) “View Downstream, 2021” from the book An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Alarmingly, the ecosystem of the area began to show significant strain in the early 2000’s, as freshwater aquifers were rerouted to housing developments and golf courses further inland, causing salty ocean water to encroach into the spring-fed wetlands. The cause and possible solutions are pondered in lucid essays by naturalist Susan Cerulean and Matthew McCarthy, Ph.D., a research scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Two more essays, one by curator and Florida native Alexa Dilworth, and another by photography curator and historian Alison Nordström, bring deeper context to Dimmitt’s affecting longitudinal project.

“Remnants of Hardwood Forest, 2019” (left) “Wendell’s Fog, 2018” from the book An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt, University of Georgia Press, 2023. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“Savanna and Creek, 2015” (left) “Savana and Creek, 2021” from the book An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt, University of Georgia Press, 2023. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
It is Dimmitt’s pictures that make the most convincing case to save this fragile and wondrous natural habitat. His frequent use of stark daylight in monochrome images, made with a square, medium-format camera, seem to emphasize his heartbreak. And yet there is a magic in his busy compositions of gestural trees, meandering waterways and palm fronds that seem integral to the artist’s own core equilibrium. Devastation is revealed in pictures made in the same locations, years apart, rendering an enormous melancholy to the book. Occasional pictures made on foggy days anticipate disappearance, and Dimmitt’s own prediction that this landscape will soon be a seascape. I have never been to this place, but Dimmitt’s aching photographs make me grasp that its loss will throw the environment even further out of balance and accelerate adverse effects farther afield.

Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel, Volume 1 from “Los Angeles: Landscapes of Four Ecologies.” (MACK Books, 2023)

“L.A. River, Glendale Narrows” from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
While the Chassahowitzka ecosystem appears to be drowning, the environs around the Los Angeles River some twenty-five hundred miles west of Florida appear like a scrappy survivor. Mark Ruwedel’s Rivers Run Through It, the first volume from a series called Los Angeles: Landscapes of Four Ecologies, explores the arid, flat Californian southland. Most people rarely encounter the river that wends its way through the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles. As a child growing up there, I was oblivious to its presence. And it does not look like a much of a river, with miles of concrete riverbeds, banks and just a trickle of water. In the 1930’s, the river was subject to a public works project that helped prevent floods in the L.A. basin with a concrete channel. By harnessing and controlling how and where water flowed, Los Angeles grew into one of the largest cities in the country.

“Big Tujunga Wash #23, 2018” from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“Haskell Creek #5, 2018 (left) and #17, 2021” from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy).
Today, the built and natural landscape function in a symbiotic manner. Ruwedel takes readers on a journey to the headwaters of the Big Tujunga wash where the river forms and ferries us through the Sepulveda Wildlife Refuge and Haskell Creek through the Glendale Narrows and along the Arroyo Seco and Rio Hondo tributaries and finally to the estuaries in Long Beach.

“L.A. River, Glendale Narrows # 39, 2016” from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Arroyo Seco #36, 2020″ from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy).
Using a long mid-tonal range, Ruwedel’s pictures are perhaps more objective in their emotional resonance than Dimmitt’s. They bear a resemblance to New Topographics masters such as Robert Adams or Frank Gholke, whose dispassionate compositions critiqued humanity’s quest to conquer nature. Ruwedel’s laconic Los Angeles light, however, reveals a certain awe at nature’s ability to thrive among paved parking lots, overhead freeways and sprawl. Hints of human carelessness in the form of garbage, plastic bags and lost detritus are peppered throughout the pictures.

“L.A. River Estuary #9, 2017” and “L.A. River Estuary #10, 2019 from the book Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy).
Nonetheless, Ruwedel discloses pockets of serenity: a large heron poses proudly among the vegetation; lone figures on horseback in two separate images indicate a sense of quiet by the scant waters of the river. The final few pictures are striking portraits of mature trees flourishing in the shallows of the estuary in Long Beach, close to where the river flows into the ocean. There is a tenacity in their gestures that seem to defy this ecologically neutered watershed.

“Untitled, Nam Ha, 1994” by An-My Lê from the series Viet Nam (1994-1998) from the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Like heavy industry, the destruction of war can turn a pastoral area into a hellscape. Photographer An-My Lê turned her camera on the aftermath of the Vietnam War in the late 1990’s and continues to explore the impact of militarism on landscapes both arid and lush. A retrospective exhibition of her work is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC through March 16th, 2024. The exhibition catalog, An My Lê: Between Two Rivers by Roxanne Marcoci, offers a deep dive into her art and ideas around war and peace.

“Untitled Hanoi, 1994” (left) “Untitled Hanoi, 1995” (upper right) “Untitled Hanoi, 1998 by An-My Lê from the series Viet Nam (1994-1998) from the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“New Orleans, Friends, Heritage and Hope Gala, 2011” (upper left) “New Orleans, Huong, 2011” (lower left) “Hô Chi Minh City, Ly, Sông Design Studio, 2011″ (upper right) Hô Chi Minh City, Sông Design Office Kitchen, 2011” by An-My Lê from the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Unlike the first two books that present a single series, Between Two Rivers delves into An-My Lê’s prolific decades-long career and presents numerous projects, though not in the same fluid chronology as the exhibition. All of them are rooted in a sense of place, even the portraits. At fifteen, her life was interrupted when she fled her native Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. She was able to return in the 1990’s, searching her homeland in poignant black and white, large-format portraits and landscapes. Children playing in a courtyard, small farms, or an empty chair by a bank of windows function as memories that might have been. She further explored the Vietnamese diaspora with a series of color portraits of communities in the Mekong and Mississippi deltas. The Vietnamese sought refuge in a place that mirrored home.

“Rescue, 1999” (upper left) “Sniper II, 1999-2002” (upper right) “Lesson, 1999-2002” by An-My Lê, from the series Small Wars in the the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
War and its and aftermath loom large in her later series. Small Wars is a group of pictures made in Virginia of Vietnam War reenactments and in 29 Palms, she photographed the war games that the U.S. plays to prepare desert conflicts.

“Manning the Rails, USS Tortuga, Java Sea, 2010” (left) and “Ship Divers, USS New Hampshire, Arctic Seas, 2011” by An-My Lê from the the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“Aircraft Carrier Arresting Gear Mechanic, USS Ronald Reagan, North Arabian Gulf, 2009” (left) “Boatswain’s Mate Driving the Helm, USS Nashville, Atlantic Ocean, 2009” from the the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Lê investigates how military personnel and infrastructure are employed for peaceful missions. The sheer volume of military might, such as massive ships, loom in stark contrast to the sensitive portraits of those who operate and maintain them. Her images seem to ask whether a peaceful mission can really succeed when we are armed to the teeth in places like, say, the arctic.

“Jefferson Davis Monument, Homeland Security Storage, New Orleans, LA, 2017″ (left) General P.G.T. Beauregard Monument, New Orleans, LA, 2016” from the the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)

“U.S. Postal Worker, Brooklyn, NY, 2019” (left) “Family under the Presidio-Ojinaga International Bridge, Rio Grande, U.S.-Mexico Border, 2019” from the the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
More recent works delve into the controversy around U.S. Confederate statues and the cultural fault lines that are fueling rifts in families and communities around the country. Perhaps most jarring is a series of embroidered images appropriated from pornographic films of U.S. soldiers with Vietnamese women. They allude to the intrusion of the west during a war that was profoundly shattering, and in the end, could not justify the cost in both Vietnamese and American lives.

“Fourteen Views, 2023” (detail) from the exhibition catalog An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci. (Book photograph by Suzanne Révy)
A center gatefold reveals fourteen strongly vertical pictures of landscapes from Vietnam, the southern U.S. and France. This immersive presentation creates a dialog about both benign and destructive human interactions with place. Well-manicured gardens are presented next to industrial structures and untamed vines engulfing a tall tree. Having experienced combat firsthand as a child, Lê’s sensibilities as an artist address the impacts of violence on the human psyche while also examining how war is the most egregious form of ecocide.
An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands
Photographs by Benjamin Dimmitt
With essays by Susan Cerulean, Alexa Dilworth, Matthew McCarthy and Alison Nordström
University of Georgia Press, 2023
https://ugapress.org/book/9780820363332/an-unflinching-look/
Dimmitt will be participating in an online panel discussion through the Griffin Museum of Photography on February 7th at 7:00pm
Rivers Run Through It
Los Angeles: Landscapes of Four Ecologies, Vol. 1
Photographs by Mark Ruwedel
MACK Books, 2023
https://www.mackbooks.us/products/rivers-run-through-it-br-mark-ruwedel
An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers
Edited by Roxana Marcoci. With contributions by La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu, Caitlin Ryan, Monique Truong, Ocean Vuong
Museum of Modern Art, 2023
https://store.moma.org/products/an-my-le-between-two-rivers-hardcover
The exhibition “An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers” is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC through March 16th, 2024.

An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers edited by Roxana Marcoci (left); An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands by Benjamin Dimmitt (upper right); Rivers Run Through It by Mark Ruwedel (lower right).