Ceding Ground

What Makes It Great? / Featured / September 19, 2023

By Suzanne Révy

After a summer of renovations, the Griffin Museum re-opens with Ceding Ground, a striking exhibition of large-scale prints depicting vast yet fragile landscapes. The exhibition features work by Bremner Benedict, Amber Crabbe, Jason Lindsey, Simon Norfolk and Camille Seaman. The masterful installation brings each artist into conversation with the others and offers a broad perspective on receding glaciers and dwindling water levels. The museum is also hosting two other environmentally-related exhibits: Arid Harbingers by Ville Kansanen and Cut Short, a study of tree rings by Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar. All exhibits are on view through October 15th, 2023. In addition, Conjuring Alchemy by Dawn Watson is installed on the museum’s exterior wall through October 31st, 2023.

“Gentoo Penguin at Port Lockroy, Antarctic Peninsula” by Camille Seaman, from Melting Away: A Penguin’s Life courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Gentoo Penguin Remains, Mikkelsen Island, Antarctic Peninsula” by Camille Seaman, 2005, from Melting Away: A Penguin’s Life courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Camille Seaman’s breathtaking views of Antarctica reveal a habitat that is under duress. Glacial melt means the penguins who inhabit this landscape blend into the dark tundra in many of these pictures. Large scale vinyl prints are adhered to the moveable gallery walls but her smaller prints, particularly one of a carcass, poignantly underscores how the receding glaciers are putting these marvelous creatures at risk. Seaman believes that humanity is an integral part of nature and her images underscore how it is incumbent upon us to mitigate the causes of climate change before the ice of the poles dissipates and the penguins become extinct.

Feature Image: “The Lewis Glacier, Mt. Kenya, 1963” by Simon Norfolk, 2014 from the series When I am Laid in Earth, courtesy of the artist, Luisotti Gallery, Los Angeles and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Shroud 8” by Simon Norfolk, 2018, from the series Shroud, courtesy of the artist, Luisotti Gallery Los Angeles, and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Simon Norfolk has photographed glaciers in the United States and Europe to describe their diminished state. In When I am Laid in Earth, he employs a line of fire to mark the early 20th century extent of Lewis Glacier on Mount Kenya in Oregon. In Shroud, Norfolk photographs a— likely futile— effort of blanketing to slow the melting of Rhône Glacier in Switzerland. Photographing at dawn or dusk, both groups of Norfolk’s photographs emphasize transient light and the ever-changing character of nature. A palette of blues and cool tones endow the work with a palpable melancholy; these shifts and changes are not merely day-to-day fluctuations, but may foreshadow a future on an uninhabitable planet.

“Cracks No. 4” by Jason Lindsey, from the series Cracks in the Ice, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

From the series “Cracked” by Jason Lindsey, installation view by Suzanne Révy

The shrouds installed over the glaciers in Norfolk’s pictures were placed there by the owners of a carved out glacial cave that is open to tourists. They are trying to preserve a livelihood in the ice. Jason Lindsey finds and then shatters late 19th and early 20th century glass slides of the European glaciers. One image, Cracks No. 4 shows one of those carved out glacial caves in an antique photograph that resembles one taken by my own Swiss ancestors. Lindsey breaks the brittle glass originals, and then re-photographs them to make large prints, but he has also installed several originals on a lightbox. Seeing these one-of-a-kind images destroyed, particularly when they look like photographs from my own family archive, is gutting.

“Ancient sea’s limestone sinkhole Devil’s Ink Well Chihuahuan Desert New Mexico” by Bremner Benedict, from the series Hidden Waters, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Pinto Hot Springs” by Bremner Benedict from the series Hidden Waters, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

From snowy mountaintops to the desert, Bremner Benedict seeks the wellsprings that are drying up throughout the desert southwest. The softly muted palette of her photographs emphasizes the depletion of these resources with poignant beauty. Water is necessary for life, even in these arid environments, and her pictures plead with urgency for us to take steps toward mitigating a looming disaster. And finally, Amber Crabbe brings the power of volcanic forces to bear in a video called I Dreamed we Could Stand Still, in which the land and water seem to be defy the ongoing climate crisis.

Still from “I Dreamed we Could Stand Still” by Amber Crabbe, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Airut Harbinger No. 3” by Ville Kansanen, from the exhibition Arid Harbingers, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Brandon” by Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar, from the exhibition Cut Short, courtesy of the artists and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

In the Atelier Gallery, Ville Kansanen presents bold photographs depicting a tripod and stone set up to measure the depth of a lake. Similar to Benedict’s work, the pastel palette is peaceful and serene but the white deposit on the stone reveals just how low the water has become. In the Griffin Gallery, Cut Short is a black and white typology of tree trunks by Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar revealing the rings that can so often tell us about past growth and traumas, but can only be seen once the tree is felled. Outside the gallery, Kansanen has installed a device on adjoining Judkins Pond to underscore what the future may hold. Dawn Watson’s Alchemy graces the outside wall of the museum, featuring five images that are inspired by the ancient arts of water, fire, earth and air to form a fifth element. Her layered abstractions engage the natural and material world with an interior sense of self.