The University of Georgia Press will publish a book of Benjamin’s climate change project titled An Unflinching Look: Elegy For Wetlands in the fall of 2023. In addition to his photography and writing, the publication will include contributions from distinguished photographer, Emmet Gowin; naturalist and activist, Susan Cerulean; research scientist and native Floridian, Dr. Matthew McCarthy; photography scholar and curator, Dr. Alison Nordström; and Alexa Dilworth, a native Floridian and former publishing director at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies.
The publication is a deep, peer-reviewed examination of the impact of climate change on the wetlands at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge on Florida’s Gulf Coast, 70 miles north of Tampa.
It will contain a total of 85 duotone photographs, including two four-page gatefolds. The book will have 128 pages and a trim size of 12”x12”.
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Benjamin Dimmitt's thoughtful photographic exploration of the early impacts of sea level rise on coastal ecosystems offers readers a chance to confront the fact that climate change is not a problem of the future but is already here with us, today. Elegies like this one offer viewers the opportunity to witness these precious places, so unique and precarious, already coming undone.
—Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, Pulitzer Prize Finalist
“An Unflinching Look delivers a powerful statement about the future that awaits the upper Florida Gulf Coast peninsula. When viewing Dimmitt’s mesmerizing and sobering photographs one sees that the future is already here and moving rapidly toward apocalypse.”
—Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea
“As someone who has lived and photographed along this section of Florida’s Gulf Coast from 1986 to the present, I applaud Benjamin Dimmitt’s efforts to give visual reference to the environmental devastation that is occurring to the fragile ecology of this strikingly beautiful region. Through his exquisite photographs and recent environmental studies, Dimmitt documents the accelerated rate at which climate change is negatively affecting this area. This publication exhibits how the rise of water levels in the gulf, saltwater intrusion, and mass forest die-offs are affecting the ecology of the area but are also changing the aesthetic of a land that was once considered paradise by many.”
—Todd Bertolaet, photographer and author of Crescent Rivers: Waterways of Florida's Big Bend
“A gorgeous, ghostly chronicle of love and loss. Returning for decades to the same forested marshlands of his beloved Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, Benjamin Dimmitt lays bare the profound coastal changes already underway in Florida with visceral images that show us what we must fight for—and against. Dimmitt has given us one of the most important visual records of climate change on the Gulf Coast. “
—Cynthia Barnett, Journalist and author of The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans
“Photographer Benjamin Dimmitt grew up in West Central Florida, loved the bays and the woods and the birds and the fishes. In 1977, he drove to the awesome Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge with his camera. So began decades of taking black-and-white photographs of a natural treasure that, as years passed, changed and changed, and not for the better. People, heed these before & after photographs. A once flowing crystal clear river is now unnaturally slow and murky. The hardwood forests, brackish swamps and bays, are hardly recognizable. An Unflinching Look, Benjamin calls this important book that documents damage wrought by a compromised aquifer, chemical pollution and saltwater intrusion made worse by rising seas. Don’t look away, Floridians. Don’t look away, Americans.”
—Jeff Klinkenberg, author of Seasons of Real Florida
"Benjamin Dimmitt's An Unflinching Look: Elegy for Wetlands is a compelling expression of ecological grief, bearing witness to loss and devastation within our lifetimes. His powerful documentation of extraordinary climate change is not only important but also a necessary telling of the world in crisis."
—Aline Smithson, founder and editor-in-chief of LENSCRATCH
“Approaches the climate crisis with raw unwavering honesty…. The images are poignant reminders of the life we’ve already lost due to the climate crisis and that, while much damage has already been done, there’s still more to save.”
