I met DM (Deanna) Witman at PhotoNOLA, where she shared her pinhole work, which went on to  be celebrated in SHOTS Magazine and the Plates to Pixels Exhibition. At the end of our review, she pulled out some new work that I found completely engaging, photographs that were created with a little help from her friends…

For her project, Genesis, Deanna uses photographic processes and random gestures or movements made by slugs as they navigate across the paper, in slow determined paths.  The results are heavenly markings that reflect time, movement, and things left behind.

Deanna received an M.F.A. in Photography from Maine Media College and a B.S. in Environmental Biology from Kutztown University. Trained as both artist and scientist, she searches for metaphysical understanding and meaning among the rocks and trees. Deanna teaches photography at a variety of schools and locations including the Maine Media Workshops, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and Project Basho in Philadelphia. As an artist-educator, she strives to impart her passion for creating. Her work has been published and exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in many private collections. Most recently, her photographs have been featured in BETA developments in photography and SHOTS Magazine.

These celestial night images—my own nebulae and galaxies—aren’t made from dark matter of the universe, but rather by the common slug. Delicate and persistent, the slug moves about from dusk until dawn on gelatin silver paper in my darkroom, making marks through their biology, creating something new. These images exist as microcosms of the cycles of life: feeding, defecation, sex, movement, life and death. It is my hope that these galaxies form new connections from one to another, from the darkness into light.