Katy Kleinginna
In Motion Staff Writer
Photo by: Lee Dunkel
Florida’s oceanic and floral landscapes are often overlooked by locals who take the scenery for granted, but few take notice of the slowly dwindling scrub habitats throughout the state.
Few, except for local photographer Lee Dunkel, who noticed changes and realized it was time to bring public attention to a looming crisis. Dunkel teamed up with Volusia County’s school board, which currently operates the Lyonia Preserve Project, a 360-acre program run in collaboration with the county land acquisition and management division. The hope is to restore local scrub habitats, endangered Florida ecosystems found in both inland and coastal locations.
Dunkel’s latest photography exhibition showcases the beauty of the landscape in its entirety, as well as highlighting individual details of the habitat. Twelve of the photographs in the exhibit are from Dunkel’s original project, “Fifteen Preludes to Lyonia,” which showcased the beauty of the plant life of the habitat.
Her current exhibition is being presented at Daytona State College’s Southeast Museum of Photography through Feb. 2, 2014. The intent of this project is to show change taking place within the Lyonia Preserve, since her original photographs were taken in 2009. From Dunkel’s first photographs of wetland scenery, her inspiration to capture the Lyonia Preserve has come from a place of curiosity.
“I’ve been working over a period of time and I had never photographed the upland areas, so consequently I thought it would be just another location to take pictures of. Most of the work I’ve done featured wetlands, so I was finally given an opportunity to explore with a different kind of photography and location,” Dunkel says of her work with the Lyonia Preserve.
The SMP exhibit photographs each depict various aspects of the terrain and plant life on the preserve, located in Deltona adjacent to the Daytona State satellite campus and the city’s library. The library also houses the Lyonia Environmental Center, an interactive series of exhibits promoting an understanding of the county’s natural environment, the heritage it sustains and the problems it faces.
Dunkel expressed the challenges of the new landscape by saying, “This project turned out somewhat differently than my previous works. It was a very different, artistically taxing medium because it was not classically beautiful. It was a lot of work to make each photo look interesting. I experimented with various types of printing and photographic layouts.
“Some of the photographs are very dark and seem almost dreary, so I refer to those as my Wuthering Heights photographs,” she adds.
The areas that Dunkel was able to photograph are not open to the public, but there are roped-off sections where people can visit and take their own pictures. The preserve is home to the rare and endangered Florida Scrub Jay, a species known for its friendly disposition and fragile status.
Dunkel’s exhibition is on display in the Southeastern Museum until 2014, but the photographer is hosting a meet-and-greet session on Nov. 9, from 4 to 6 p.m. She will answer questions and offer support to other local artists during the event, which is free and open to the public.
“I know college students are busy and have a lot going on in their lives, but I feel these sessions are important for the viewers to get a better feel for where the artist is coming from,” notes Dunkel, who encourages students to go and observe these landscapes for themselves, so they can truly understand how far these scrub habitats have fallen.