DM Witman: Ecologies of Restoration

When we talk about climate change through the lens of how it touches us personally—coastal erosion of a favorite beach, damage to waterfront dwellings, warmer than usual summers and winters, economies reliant on fishing facing depleted quantities—we are speaking the language of ecological grief. We are experiencing the loss of something that contributed to our identity, our definition of our place in the world. We are attached to the landscape that surrounds us, and its familiarity becomes a constant in our lives. It is a steady, but changing, presence. In recent years, we have become more cognizant of the feeling of loss that accompanies climate change, which are referred to as ecological or climate grief.

DM Witman’s series, Ecologies of Restoration, is a personal exploration of healing and resiliency in the face of coastal erosion and the loss of protective salt marshes. She asks us to consider loss, resilience, and healing through the exploration of a compound ubiquitous in our everyday: salt. Like our landscape, salt surrounds us and its familiarity is a constant in our lives—until it changes and we see it in a different way. In Witman’s photographs, the intricacies and individuality of the salt crystals stand in contrast to our familiarity with the many ways in which salt plays a part of our daily lives.