World-renowned nature photographer Clyde Butcher will have a special exhibition of his works at the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge beginning November 13, 2019.
Copyright Clyde Butcher Ghost Orchid
Butcher’s exhibition, The American Everglades, is part of the Refuge’s 75th-anniversary celebration. The exhibition will run from November 13, 2019, through February 5, 2020.
The public is invited to attend the opening reception of the exhibition, starting at 9 am. It will be held in the Visitor & Education Center. The celebration will include refreshments, and the opportunity to meet the photographer who will also be available to sign his books. The 35-piece photo exhibition will be open from 9 am until 4 pm daily. Clyde will also be giving two lectures on January 24, 2020, at 10 am and 1 pm.
This expansive wilderness collection represents the many years Clyde spent exploring the remote regions of the Everglades, experiencing its changes. It is a diverse and complex territory which reveals its beauty in many ways. His photographs reveal wild and natural places where few humans have ventured, and the images capture remarkable solitude and wonder.
The Everglades is one of the largest wetlands in the world and the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. The Everglades has perhaps most importantly become a beacon for conservation. The underlying message of the exhibit is the fragility of the Everglades as a habitat, and the importance of maintaining it in the pristine manner shown in the photography.
“Clyde Butcher’s remarkable photographs give us access to nature we rarely see or experience. They not only reveal the intimate and majestic beauty of the Everglades–and the need to save this fragile environment–they also remind us of the abiding kinship we mortals share when we work together to preserve these magnificent places. Butcher’s art is a national treasure.” –Ken Burns, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker
Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge is located at 1 Wildlife Drive, Sanibel (off of Tarpon Bay Road). For more information, call (239) 472-1100 or click on the link below.
https://dingdarlingsociety.org/events/clyde-butcher-photography-75th-anniversary-exhibition
More About Clyde Butcher
Clyde Butcher is an architect by training, but his difficulty in doing architectural drawings led him to photography. His early work was in color, but an Ansel Adams photography exhibit at Yosemite opened his eyes to the beauty of black and white images. Clyde left the architecture field in 1970 and began exhibiting his black and white photographs at art festivals.
In 1971 Clyde established his second business, Eye Encounter, Inc., and began selling his photographs as wall decor to department stores such as Montgomery-Wards, J.C. Penny’s, and Sears. To enhance sales, he began to use color film, and also a 5″x7″ view camera. That business was sold in 1977.
In 1983 Clyde began photographing Florida beaches, still using color film. It wasn’t until a visit to Tom Gaskin’s Cypress Knee Museum in 1984, a roadside attraction in central Florida, that Clyde was introduced to a new side of Florida. He states, after strolling on the boardwalk through a primeval cypress swamp, “a whole new world was opened up for me”. Next, Oscar Thompson, a Florida native, introduced Clyde to the Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades by taking Clyde on his first walk in the swamp. After his immersion into the beauty he found so mysterious and primeval, Clyde was then inspired to take black and white photographs of the swamp.
