Image: (Geo) Form #1, original silver negative in combination with Machine Learning, Archival Pigment Print, 20”x24”, 2024
Fire & Ice
exhibition catalog selected works 2021-2024
Dennis DeHart
Image: (Geo) Form #1, original silver negative in combination with Machine Learning, Archival Pigment Print, 20”x24”, 2024
THE HAND IN NATURE, DENNIS DEHART: AERIAL AND FOSSILS
“History turns space into place” is the first line of the first chapter of Liz Well’s 2012 book Land Matters, where Wells discusses that landscapes are not void of people but a social and cultural construction. It may be hard to relate to Well’s words, for we are trained to look upon a landscape and not see ourselves as part of it. The notion of looking at landscapes has not changed; we still desire to see landscapes for their beauty and reverence. While Dennis’s work plays with traditional and new technological tropes of photographing landscapes, he also questions this language. He ultimately tries to understand what makes a place, its history, and how we can create a new understanding of place over time.
Exotic Terrane is a preface to Aerial + Fossils, where Dennis spends years getting to know this location. He travels by foot, bike, and boat to explore all parts of Hells Canyon, areas easily open to the public, and the less explored regions. These explorations are documented by photographing his journeys and creating beautiful imagery on foot in the 7 Devils Wilderness, part of the Hells Canyon Wilderness. He also took images of the National Recreation land with his drone.
Along with the gorgeous imagery he produces, his audience also sees field notes represented as social media posts. These posts function much like personal journals. Dennis notes and shares his experiences, feelings, and discoveries throughout his explorations and study of the history of Hells Canyon. These social media field notes are stories within themselves that create an entryway to the personal narrative of the transition of space developing into a more personal place for Dennis.
But what begins to be revealed in this series and is true of all Dennis’ past photographic series is Dennis’ desire to understand this specific location concerning contemporary issues related to public lands and mythologies tied to western spaces. Dennis shares with his audience what he read during this exploration process. Some titles include The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West and Unsettled Ground, The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West.
While exploring Hells Canyon, Dennis looks at it with a new contemporary lens. He provides evidence of how humans have inhabited this public space and how the western mythologies have impacted how we perceive it, but he also questions how it has evolved on its own.
With closer examination, the work that could initially be seen at its surface as gorgeous imagery is now more complicated. It’s Dennis’s second series, Aerial + Fossils, where things dramatically depart from this traditional documentary approach.
Two things are happening in Aerial + Fossils that make it so magical. First, Dennis explores his relationship with Hells Canyon further by creating topographical objects from his 360-degree VR drone images. He constructs sculptural objects from these topographical-quality landscape photographs, which he documents as formal archetypes. There is something interesting about taking sophisticated digital data, positioning and composing it in physical three-dimensional form to later compose again by filtering it and presented it as a two-dimensional form. Through this physical abstraction, we get a new understanding of how this location could be re-imagined.
Secondly, Dennis presents photographs of fossilized sea life found in Hells Canyon. These fossils are approximately 200 million years old, and part of the collection housed in the University of Montana’s Geo-sciences department. These are shown in a similar macro scale as the photo objects Dennis creates. The fossils appear familiar in their formal compositional construction, but there is a play of focus that makes them feel unfamiliar and peculiar. Both the images of fossils and the photo objects play with the idea of the macro, micro, and the sense of time.
But his use of black and white imagery makes this series so rich with mystery. All the images are bold and full of topographic texture. One might get disoriented as they look between pictures of the terrain, Dennis’s hand-made photo objects, and fossils. The imagery starts to bleed into one another and respond to each other in this metaphysical way. What are we looking at? Do these images represent a past or future representation of Hells Canyon, and what is our relationship with this space?
I don’t think Dennis gives us any specific answers, as he continues to explore. He is interested in looking at the non-linear impacts on a complex system. Dennis says, he is “compelled by deep time, and the relative incomprehensibility we have, of truly understanding geologic change. I am also interested in the richness of an ecologically world view, focused on the importance of interdependency and how everything is interconnected.”
This quote profoundly explains Dennis DeHart’s relationship with the complexity of multi-disciplinary documentation of the landscape. It also reminds us how important it is to make art, reevaluate what seems evident, and allow ourselves to explore. This is where science and art are intertwined. We need the freedom to be illogical and adhere to the potentially anti-formality of artmaking to enable more questions.
In his last experimentations, he introduces film-related alternative processes, which creates illusionary layers, textures and other visuals insertions to yet again dissect the landscape. There is a genuine curiosity and progression between Exotic Terrane and Aerial + Fossils as Dennis gives himself time to analyze the Hells Canyon terrain. One series couldn’t work without the other, and what is seen with both works is a more significant nuanced question of how we relate to our surroundings.
At the bottom of the Aerial + Fossil page on Dennis’s website, he presents a quote by James Bridle from Ways of Being, Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for Planetary Intelligence. James Bridle says, “In order to change ourselves, to take on different ways of thinking about the world, we need new ways of seeing it. We are accustomed, largely by scientific practice, to take things apart, separating them into their component attributes, fixing them for study, and piece by piece reducing their collective agency until they have non at all. But this is the opposite of ecology, which seeks to find connections between things and to resolve them into greater, interconnected systems. The lens required now is not a microscope, but a macroscope: a device for seeing at a far vaster scale-both in space and time-than we are use to.”
-Sarah Knobel @sknobel
A version of this article was first published in Lenscratch as part of The Hand in Nature: a week of photographs that manipulates how we see and foresee our environment.
Photographs help us process what is happening in the world, and this week we’ll be following photographers whose work inspects humans’ impact on the earth. More importantly, the posts will focus on how each photographer uses their hand in the manipulation of imagery. Many of the photographers’ works curiously demonstrate our history and future relationship with the earth.
www.lenscratch.com
HELLS CANYON: AN EXOTIC TERRANE
An exotic terrane terrain is a piece of the Earth’s crust that has merged with another landmass and has a separate and entirely different geologic history.
Hells Canyon: An Exotic Terrane is an interdisciplinary artist project, centered around Hells Canyon Wilderness / National Recreation Area and adjacent environs. The works focus on place, including a visual celebration of natural beauty, quality of light, and aesthetics. Exotic Terrane also engages with contemporary issues related to public lands, water, and borders. The works are both a celebration and critique of western spaces, in relationships to identity, mythology, and power. The project is supported by a Fellowship from WSU’s Center for Arts and Humanities.
Above Image: Craig Mountain Wildlife Management Area, Right: 7 Devils Wilderness & Heavens Gate, Hells Canyon Wilderness, Archival Pigment Prints, 2021-22
Above Images: 4 View of Sheep Lake, 7 Devils Wilderness Right Images: Snake River Hells Canyon Wilderness, Trail, 7 Devils Wilderness, Archival Pigment Prints, 2021-22
Above Image: Balance, Hells Gate State Park, Right Images: Dug Bar (Historic Nez Perce Crossing), Hells Canyon Dam, Archival Pigment Prints, 2021-2023
All images photographed in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Hells Canyon Wilderness, and middle Snake River between the US states of Washington, Oregon, & Idaho, 2020-2023
Installation
Above Images: view for Exotic Terrane, archival pigment prints, Variable sizes, 2023
AERIAL + OBJECTS + FOSSILS
These works are a creative response to visual, experiential, and technical research focused on Hells Canyon, which is located in the US states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Initially, the project focused on creative forms of mapping, while developing a broader knowledge of place. As the works evolved, my understanding and experience became more nuanced, and poetic and aesthetic possibilities formed artistically.
Above Image: Snake River, near Kirkwood Ranch, Hells Canyon, Right: 200 Million year Old Fossils found in Hells Canyon, Photographed at University of Montana Geo Labs, Archival Pigment Prints, 2021-23
Above Image: She Devil, 7 Devils Wilderness. Right Images: Imnaha Recreation Area, Archival Pigment Prints, 2021-2023
Above Images: Hells Canyon, comprised of 9 aerial images, 30”x40” pigment print, 2023
SCABLANDS, 2018-2024
Fire and Ice // 2024
Images: Devils Canyon / Washtucna Pool, Fire & Ice, 30”x40” pigment prints, 2024
Above Image: Scablands (above the Palouse River) 30”x40” pigment print, 2023
Above Image: Scablands (above the Columbia River/White Bluffs) 30”x40” pigment print, 2024
geo : form refers to a geological or geographic feature, often related to the Earth’s surface. It encompass various natural formations such as mountains, valleys, rivers, or any distinct physical aspect of the landscape. The works explore the beauty and complexity of geological structures such as rocks, minerals, and landscapes., while emphasizing geometric forms and structures, Geo : form references deep time, while exploring the vast temporal scales of geological processes and the Earth’s history. The works seek to convey the immense spans of time through visual representations of geological formations, shifts, and transformations. Through artistic interpretation, geo : form spans millions years, highlighting the ever-changing nature of our planet
Naturgemalde is untranslatable German term that can mean a ‘painting of nature’ but it also implies a sense of unity or wholeness. The term is associated with Prussian naturalist and pioneering environmentalist, Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt was less interested in isolated facts, but instead in connecting them, and believed that one’s own emotions and subjective views were necessary, to completely experience nature. Inspired by Humboldt, I am compelled by deep time, and the relative incomprehensibility we have, of truly understanding geologic change. I am also interested in the richness of an ecologically world view, focused on the importance of interdependency and how everything is interconnected.
Above Image: (Geo) Form #2, 4”x5” tintype, (scanned and printed at 40”x60”, 2023
Dennis DeHart’s works engage with the connections, conflicts, and intersections of nature and culture. His photography and interdisciplinary projects weave together interconnected themes of identity, place, and the natural world. Committed to a journey of life-long learning and adventure, art function as Dennis’ primary tool of inquiry. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest; water, and public lands, play a significant role in his identity and world view. Dennis is currently an Associate Professor of Art with Washington State University, which is located on the ceded lands of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) tribe and the traditional homelands of the Palus Band of Indians
Dennis has exhibited broadly, including dozens of solo exhibitions, numerous media and art contexts, and over 100 group shows nationally and internationally. He has received grants and support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Arizona Arts Commission, Santa Fe Art Institute, Artist Trust, and others. Dennis photographs are included in private and public collections including the J. Paul Getty, George Eastman House, The City of Phoenix, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Dennis received his MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico in 2002. He previously served as an Assistant Professor of Photography with the State University of New York College at Buffalo and is currently an Associate Professor of Art with Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.
www.dennisdehart.com
