Maine Museum of Photographic Arts

Exhibition location: Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine

DM Witman, Galaxy Lucia

2012, archival toned fiber gelatin silver printed mounted on anodized aluminum, four panels, 9.31 x 13.75 inches each, courtesy Susan Maasch Fine Art Gallery. On view at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts exhibition at the Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine.

Johanna Moore, Hewnoak 2

2014, 1 3/4 x 3 inch paper negative from 6 mm pinhole exposure, 8 x 10 inch print, courtesy of the artist. On view at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts Exhibition at the Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine.

DM Witman, Mt. Katahdin

2014, salt print, 24 x 30, courtesy of Susan Maasch Fine Art

Johanna Moore, River Road, Madison, 99 Days

2014, solargraph, 10 x 10 inches, courtesy of the artist

Johanna Moore, Vaughan Homestead 2

solargraph, courtesy of the artist

Johanna Moore, The Great Carrying Place

solargraph, courtesy of the artist

Diary of a River: Solargraphs of the Kennebec River
January 22-August 21
“Solargraphs are long exposure images made with a pinhole camera. For this exhibit I will be producing images with a six month exposure between the summer and winter solstices (June 21-December 21, 2014). Pinhole cameras made using 8 ounce juice cans, coffee cans, or pint-size paint cans lined with photographic paper will be set out along the Kennebec River and several of its tributaries, from historic sites to river dams. These pinhole images will capture the sun as it traces the sky over the six month exposure time.” -- Johanna E. Moore.

Related Programs

Opening Reception, January 22
Artist Talk, April 9

A Lensless Vision: Contemporary Camera-less Works by DM Witman
September 10-December 29

“For the past ten years, I have been making photographs without a lens. I didn’t choose this way of working, rather, it has evolved project by project to the sum of a lensless practice. It began with pinholes, and moved next to experiments with slugs and silver gelatin paper, and now in my most recent undertaking, on to salted paper. Each project has found me independently of the other. There is freedom in simplicity and elegance in process. My themes of working revolve around ephemerality, biology, metaphor, and creating synergy- all consequences of dual interest in art and science.” --DM Witman

About the Supercluster Arion series: "These celestial night images—my own nebulae and galaxies—aren’t made from dark matter of the universe, but rather by the common slug. Delicate and persistent, the slug moves about from dusk until dawn on gelatin silver paper in my darkroom, making marks through their biology, creating something new. These images exist as microcosms of the cycles of life: feeding, defecation, sex, movement, life and death. It is my hope that these galaxies form new connections from one to another, from the darkness into light.” Watch video here.

About the Melt series: "Melt is a project that deals with one of my themes of obsession, that of ephemerality and dynamic states. When I was an undergraduate student studying environmental science, one of the required readings was Aldo Leopold’s 1949 “A Sand County Almanac”. In “Prairie Birthday”, Leopold recounts the story of a patch of cup-plant, a plant remnant of the prairies once covering the midwest. Leopold observes this remnant patch of Silphium located in a graveyard that he would watch sprout up every July and he wrote: “The erasure of a human subspecies is largely painless - to us - if we lidle enough about it. ...We grieve only for what we know. The erasure of Silphium form western Dane County is no cause for grief if one knows it only as a name in a botany book.” The grief felt over the current state of our world as a result of climate is a grief so strong that it brought me to conceive of this project. Many studies project that within a decade snow will not exist in many of the historic snowiest places because they will be too warm. These places will cease to exist as we have known them. I want people to know, to connect with the issue like I connected to the words of Leopold, via my photographic project, so that as many people as possible are called to ac+on, even in the smallest of ways." Watch video here.

DM Witman's work was also featured in a Maine Photo Project exhibition at Unity College's Leonard R. Craig Gallery.

Related Programs

Opening Reception, September 10
Artist Conversation, October 29