{"id":341882,"date":"2026-07-16T07:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/341882\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:52:10","slug":"wild-space-exhibit-chronicles-environmental-degradation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/341882\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Space exhibit chronicles environmental degradation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a kayak tour organized by Wild Space Gallery in late June, I glided over a stretch of the Chassahowitzka River, just past the Seven Sisters Springs. As I paddled by, I saw huge clumps of algae floating in the water. This used to be just a pristine, crystal clear spring. You could see clear down to the bottom. Now it looks kind of green.<\/p>\n

This is a little different than what Benjamin Dimmitt first photographed 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLower Crawford Creek, 1988, 2014\u201d (top and bottom, respectively), by Benjamin Dimmitt.<\/p>\n

Dimmitt, a Clearwater native, has lugged his medium-format film camera to places like this in Citrus County for decades. His photographs of the same place shown years apart are on display at St. Petersburg\u2019s Wild Space Gallery through the end of July.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see how pristine it was, and then you see it a certain number years later,\u201d said gallery director Leslie Elsasser, \u201cand you see it\u2019s completely altered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition is called An Unflinching Look: Elegy for a Landscape. Elegy is the Greek word for \u201csong of mourning.\u201d These photos are a reflection of mourning for a place that no longer looks the way it once did.<\/p>\n

In one display, the first photograph shows a vibrant forest surrounding a bend in the river. In the second \u2013 taken decades later at the same spot \u2013 spindly limbs bow into the water. The tops of palm trees are bare, their trunks shorn of all vegetation. The landscape is almost unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

Gallery curator Noel Smith calls this technique \u201crephotography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of rephotography is such an incredible, powerful tool for conservation,\u201d she said. \u201cThat idea that you can see over time the degradation or the changes, and I think that\u2019s very interesting for people, but it\u2019s also emotional to see how things change.<\/p>\n

Algae from too many nutrients in the water has overtaken this part of the Chassahowitzka River, just downstream from the Seven Sisters Spring.<\/p>\n

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Algae from too many nutrients in the water has overtaken this part of the Chassahowitzka River, just downstream from the Seven Sisters Spring. Photo by Steve Newborn.<\/p>\n

Dimmitt\u2019s niece, Mallory Lykes Dimmitt, heads the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. It\u2019s dedicated to preserving connections between the state\u2019s fast-dwindling natural areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see just how pervasive the change is, and it allows our brain to kind of process the before and the after,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re just paddling down it, you\u2019re seeing what it is now, but it\u2019s hard to picture what it was like before. So I think that\u2019s the beauty of this photography over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mallory Dimmitt said her image of her uncle is \u201cup to here in water with the tripod and the camera out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been coming to the \u201cChaz\u201d springs since she was a little kid. Speaking to the paddlers over clumps of green algae clouding the otherwise clear springs, she recalled what it used to look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember this being full of green eelgrass, and there was enough flow coming out of here that you would just, you know, the eelgrass lays over on its side, is right up at the surface, and has all kinds of life within it,\u201d she said from her kayak. \u201cAnd as we just paddled up that run, it\u2019s shocking to me how much- there\u2019s a little bit of grass, but it\u2019s all covered in filamentous algae. And that algae has really taken over the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are several culprits. Climate change means saltwater backs up the flow of fresh water, killing palm trees downstream. And human impacts include over-pumping groundwater, which lessens the spring\u2019s flow. Septic tanks leach nutrients that feed the algae.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust think of upstream of us where this water source comes from Sugarmill Woods and (U.S. Highway) 19 and the development just east of here and between here and 19 as well,\u201d Mallory Dimmitt said. \u201cWe\u2019re in an area of the world where most homes are on septic and not on sewer, and we\u2019ve got leaching from that, from the roads and from lawns and all of human life that increases the nutrients that are in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

As ocean levels rise, saltwater intrudes on what used to be a freshwater habitat. Those results are very apparent in many of the photographs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you look downriver, you can tell there are many more trunks of palms than there are tops of palms,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so part of what we\u2019re seeing is the loss of the vibrancy of this palm hammock over time as saltwater intrudes and as their roots are inundated in saltwater, they lose vigor. That means that the canopy is reduced and ultimately the tops of the palms will die off and you\u2019ll be left with a lot of standing snags.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Benjamin Dimmitt\u2019s photographs is called \u201cRequiem for a Landscape.\u201d But Mallory Dimmit said it doesn\u2019t have to be an elegy for future generations. We can cut down on spring pollution by hooking up leaky septic tanks to wastewater treatment plants. We can regulate how much water we pump out of the aquifer. We can cut back on planet-warming emissions.<\/p>\n

Instead of an elegy, she says the future could be a cause for hope.<\/p>\n

An Unflinching Look: Elegy for a Landscape is on display through July 25 at the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation\u2019s Wild Space Gallery, 2606 Fairfield Ave S., The Factory St. Pete.<\/p>\n

Steve Newborn is a reporter for WUSF, the bay area\u2019s NPR affiliate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a kayak tour organized by Wild Space Gallery in late June, I glided over a stretch of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-341882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}