Jeff Beekman, Displacements 2, 2023

Over the past few weeks, I have interviewed three different photographers whom I chose because of their work related to the environment. As I studied their work and asked them questions, the more it resonated; they are all searching for a larger truth through imagery and their use of the camera. The work they create connects to personal, historical, and scientific meanings, as well as mere curiosity. It is about sustaining nature while also seeking a connection and a more profound understanding, working towards symbolic production. 

Today, I will introduce Jeff Beekman’s work.

Jeff Beekman‘s photographs are deeply rooted in his lifelong connection to Florida and an intimate understanding of the devastation natural disasters have left behind. He has photographed the devastation caused by hurricanes over many years, showing us all aspects of this destruction – the scorched forests, eroded coastlines, and scattered homes and marine life. He always returns to them in search of answers and symbolic renewal.

During our interview, Jeff discusses the need for empathetic attention in creating imagery of natural disasters, the slow processes of displacement, collapse, and regrowth, and the ethical and creative responsibilities that come with doing work like this. 

Jeff Beekman, South Florida 9, 2023.

Sarah Knobel: You are photographing the aftermath of hurricanes in Florida, where you have lived most of your life? Can you give us some context on these three series, North & South Florida and Displacements and how long you have been photographing the aftermath of these catastrophes?

Jeff Beekman: I grew up and went to college in Florida, eventually moving away when I was 23 for graduate school. I returned 12 years ago for a teaching position at Florida State University, so deep connections. Even as a kid I was very conscious of the impacts of severe weather on our state, and hurricane season has always been a source of anxiety. When I was 16 I joined a volunteer group that went down to Homestead, FL to help clean up after Hurricane Andrew. I’d never seen anything like that before – houses torn apart with their contents tossed everywhere, personal effects intermixed with drywall, splintered wood, pink insulation – it was the most violent and violating thing I think I’ve ever seen. I’ve never really gotten over it. Over 25,000 homes had been destroyed, and another 100,000 damaged. Maybe it was something about being young, and not yet having the emotional guardrails or ability to compartmentalize that we develop later on, but experiences like this have really stayed with me and undoubtedly continue to inform my current practice.

Jeff Beekman, South Florida 2, 2023

The North Florida works focus primarily on the enduring impacts of Hurricane Michael. It wasn’t the hurricane itself I was interested in, but the cascade of issues that arose afterward. The communities impacted by Michael I was looking at were unable to contend with the volume of felled trees. The miles of broken trees laying there for year under the intense Florida sun led to what seemed like countless forest fires. At one point in 2022, it was reported that there were over 150 separate fires burning across the state, with the most intense in this region. The inability to make this land unusable for forestry purposes (their primary industry), led to a kind of “rural blight” that saw families relocating and businesses failing. Being relatively close to Tallahassee, I’d return month after month for about 3 years, sometimes taking photos, sometime not. What brought me in initially was the violence, what kept me going back was seeing this overcome, communities getting back on their feet again. One of the real surprises for me was that the slow pace of the clean-up began revealing the natural world’s own capacity to reclaim and heal. I have a vivid memory of seeing energetic green saplings breaking ground in an ashen field full of charred logs – life breaking through. I find great joy in this, that when we give it the appropriate time and space, the land can and will heal itself.

Jeff Beekman, Liberty County, 2023

Jeff Beekman, Callaway 14, 2024

The South Florida work is a bit different, and the trips there were fewer but more intense –  spending a week or two onsite, often with my good friend and photographer Justin Chase Lane. It was with him that I visited the Keys where I documented the abandoned highway that was so damaged by storms that they cut off access entirely back in the 1970’s. Since then, countless storms and the intensity of the saltwater and sun have extensively contributed to its erosion. It’s become a really powerful symbol for me of how difficult it is to create any truly enduring mark on the landscape.

Videostill, Bahai Honda Overseas Highway, 2024

Other works specifically deal with the impacts of storm surge. Hurricane Ian struck Fort Myers Beach, submerging just about everything under 15 feet of water. In visiting a few months later, what most often struck me, is how everything had been scattered and displaced. Cars and houses had been swept out to sea, and all these things from the sea were carried and in left when the waters receded. The Displacement series specifically explored the boats and sea life left behind.

Jeff Beekman, South Florida 21, 2024

SK: How does your connection with these locations influence your process and has it changed over time?

JB: This all began with a grant I received from the university I teach at. In it I proposed a way of working based upon what I’ve done previously, described the kind of images I planned to make, developed an itinerary, budget, etc. A lot of my previous work was made this way – a very rational approach, convincing myself and others that all I really need are the resources to see what I conceived on paper realized.

Jeff Beekman, Daytona Beach Shores 6, 2023

The sites visited in this situation, however, were so overwhelming that this simply didn’t work. I had to handle things differently, and what the work itself taught me is that it is okay and even valuable to embrace uncertainty. That there’s real power in putting yourself into new situations and prioritizing exploration over any kind of predetermined result. I’m learning to use the work as a means to connect with place, to think and explore through my hands and eyes and feet. I’m finding it really important to spend time just being present, finding out what I am struck by on a bodily, visceral level, and leaning into that. Decisions about conceptual and aesthetic framing come later, mostly as a means to focus and amplify.

To provide a more concrete example, I took hundreds of images of fish and other sea life that were scattered across beaches, roads, and parking lots in Fort Myers Beach in the wake of Hurricane Ian. No one was really paying attention to these, yet they were everywhere. I spent days looking at them, becoming enamored with the beauty of their forms – the topography of desiccated skin, the complex network of overlapping scales, the porcelain white of protruding bones, but also the violence wrought by scavengers, the impact of sun and salt. None of the images of the fish in the environments I found them in did what I needed them to, however. It was almost out of desperation and dying light that I brought them back to my hotel to photograph them in a makeshift studio my friend Justin and I set up. 

Jeff Beekman, Displacements 4, 2023

Pulling these into a studio allowed me to prioritize those elements I cared about – the beauty and tragedy written across these bodies, in a manner I wasn’t able to highlight against the background of pavement, gravel, or sand. I think the result is an unconventional way to explore the impacts of a hurricane, and this was not something I could have come up with, without first giving myself permission to simply be present, affected by the locations I was spending time in. 

 SK: Of all the images you have photographed, is there one particular image that resonates with you more than others or more intimate than others?

 JB: There’s something about the green vines entering the interior space in Callaway 4, that I am really drawn to. This was taken in a former church whose roof had been ripped off due during Hurricane Michael, that proceeded to destroy pretty much everything inside. Still, while the image clearly indicates a space in ruin, there is something about the way the light filters in, the tentative way the vines come into the space that feels curious and youthful. There’s a kind of quiet elegance, full of life despite the setting. 

Jeff Beekman, Callaway 4, 2023

SK: What I notice about most of your work is that you show humanity displaced by climate catastrophe and the impacts on marine life and natural landscapes as well. Can you discuss these images and how you connect them to the other photos from the series?

 JB: I have thousands of images of damaged landscapes – drone footage of tornado pathways, homes being crushed by boats or slipping into the surf after the ground beneath them has given way. While I am sure that I will continue giving myself permission to explore all this in the future, and even see value in putting myself in positions where I am forced to confront the impacts of climate catastrophe, I am really beginning to doubt the efficacy of these images. It’s feeling less and less useful to allow the work to simply be about trauma and grief. That’s the language of 24-hour news networks, and I’m finding that the aestheticization of grief is a line I’m becoming less comfortable crossing – be it my own or someone else’s. Beyond that, I’m not sure simply depicting environmental violence is particularly motivating. If my work is going to productively participate in any future discourse about climate, if my work is going to have any impact, it needs to operate differently.

Jeff Beekman, Liberty County 3, 2023

SK: I think this is something we all seek and question as photographers who deal with the environment. How do we reach an audience that is oversaturated with shocking imagery? How do we make change and how can we operate differently? It’s a hard question that you have studied and given thought to.  As you move forward, do you still plan to document the aftermath of storms in Florida? How do you think the work will change? What are some takeaways you have from doing the work, and what do you want your audience to get from viewing it?

 JB: Definitely continuing the work. I’ve been reading and watching a lot of Jack Halberstam, particularly Aesthetics of Collapse, in which he talks about “ruin” and “decay” as productive spaces in the sense they challenge conventional notions of progress and development. In order to build something new, first you have to allow what’s already there to be unbuilt. So, ruins and ruination as necessary unbuilding. Visiting the spaces I have through this work, documenting the bodies, spending time in these communities that have been violently “unbuilt” in the wake of human-caused natural disasters, so much work needs to be done in order to promote the perspectival shift necessary to allow another world to come into being, much less recognize that the escalating nature of ecological violence is a planet seeking balance. 

Jeff Beekman, Liberty County 3, 2023

One of the biggest challenges is encouraging others to not see catastrophes in isolation, but as interconnected. It is so well understood that as temperatures rise, so does the volatility of our natural environment, to the extent that all advanced life on this planet could disappear if the past is any indicator and current projections prove true. In explaining how we have gotten here, ecologists talk about the “shifting baseline syndrome,” as the single greatest hurdle to collective efforts aimed at preventing, minimizing, or delaying worst possible outcomes. Predicated on a lack of direct experience with our natural world (in favor of climate controlled buildings, the distraction of media, etc), there is no consistent baseline from which we can collectively begin to say enough is enough, demand action, and make changes. This “shifting baseline,” allows for a kind of generational amnesia, the forgetting of what is being lost in our natural world as it is being lost, in a manner that effectively instills paralysis.

Jeff Beekman, Callaway 17, 2023

If our goal is to be a part of any kind of positive change, as artists, as image makers, we have to be willing to adapt our practices. What we should all be striving for is another Silent Spring or 7000 Oaks, projects that carried the narrative of collapse but also articulated paths forward as they sought a re-enchantment (or at least reengagement) with the natural world. I don’t have the answers, but it’s what I think about, how I justify images of collapse sharing space with the fragile and beautiful. I just need to craft a better story.  

SK: I would love to hear what has been inspiring you lately. What are you reading or listening to that has transformed the way you are thinking or working?

JB: I’ve been rereading Stephen Jay Gould’s Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History and appreciate his ability to distill complex ideas into simple declarative statements. In it he talks about the interconnectedness of all life, describes the dangers of fundamentalism, dogmatic worldviews, and human arrogance, and in one of my favorite passages wrote, “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well – for we will not fight to save what we don’t not love.”

I’ve also been really enjoying Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene, a web-based experimental open-access publication by Stanford University that’s curated and edited by Anna Tsing among others. If you haven’t checked it out, I definitely recommend it as its beautiful, poetic, and incredibly informative. 

Lastly, and not specifically ecologically focused, but I recently came Beautiful Trouble, which seeks to, among other things, catalogue the various tactics activists and grassroots movements across the globe have used to create positive change, providing case studies, discussing their relative strengths and weaknesses, and so much more. It’s an amazing resource in this current moment. I read Beautiful Rising a number of years ago, and thought it was amazing, Beautiful Trouble is a powerful, substantial, and free expansion on the ideas contained within. 

Jeff Beekman, South Florida.

Bio:
Whether exploring the enduring impacts of climate change, the Land Arts movement as a catalyst for contemporary art making, or the ethics behind the memorialization of sites of violence, Beekman’s work examines the relationships between land, memory, and human activity. Materials and processes employed are dependent upon the conceptual ideas being explored, though in recent years the majority of artwork produced has been lens-based. The work has been exhibited broadly across the U.S. and internationally at venues in New Zealand, Australia, China, South Korea, Hungary, England, Italy, and Vietnam. 

Beekman received his BFA from the University of Florida in 2000 and in 2005 received his MFA from the University of New Mexico. Since that time he has held a variety of teaching and administrative positions at institutions including the University of New Mexico – Gallup, Georgia Southern University, and the University of Oklahoma. He currently teaches at Florida State University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Art.

You can view Jeff’s work on his website, https://www.jeffbeekman.net/,  and instagram at @jeffbeekman .