Clyde Butcher: America's Everglades
Exhibit Dates: January 12 - April 3, 2021
The rugged and remote beauty of the Everglades is captured in these works which span over three decades of foraging into dense swampland. Delicate ecosystems, rare botanical specimens, and sweeping landscapes bring the wonder of this mysterious part of our country to light. The beauty of the Everglades is celebrated in the monumental photographs of Clyde Butcher. The scale, extraordinary clarity and tonal range set his photographs apart as exceptional works of art, earning him recognition as the foremost landscape photographer in America today. These powerful black and white images are portraits of the eternal bond between man and nature that is the soul of the Everglades. From the deepest cypress strands of the sawgrass prairies, coastal waters, and languid estuaries, to pinpoint still-lives of rare species, Clyde reveals its ecosystems in magnificent detail. He makes an unquestionable case for why we should care about its future.
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. Shaped and sustained by seasonally flowing shallow water, the Everglades is home to dozens of threatened and endangered species, massive flocks of wading birds, recovering populations of alligators, crocodiles, and millions of insects. Exceptional for its diverse combination of rich plant and wildlife communities, varied habitats, and remote wilderness, the Everglades has perhaps most importantly become a beacon for conservation. “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
