by Janina Birtolo
The answer to that question depends upon perspective. And perhaps no one has a clearer or more striking perspective on the subject than photographer Clyde Butcher.
His black-and-white photos, taken with large-format cameras that allow him to capture details thirty-five-millimeter cameras just can’t get, hang in the statehouse in Tallahassee, a means to show people what the real Florida is like. He’s become the respected and eloquent chronicler and champion of the state’s environment. He has also turned his sharp photographer’s eye on natural landscapes from California to Cuba to the Czech Republic, and his work is collected around the world.
With his grizzled beard and battered hat, Butcher looks as though he might well have been born in the swamp he has so lovingly recorded on film. Actually, it wasn’t until the late 1980s, after his son, Ted, died in a car accident, that the photographer became immersed in his surroundings. He found solace in the swamp.
“This place has a heartbeat,” Butcher says. “It’s alive. Everything is creeping and crawling. It’s just got a primeval feel to it. I think it’s intimate. That’s what excites me about it. I like intimacy.”
It was following Ted’s death that Butcher switched from the pretty, color pictures he’d been taking and selling successfully at art shows to his by-now trademark black and whites. “Clyde would never have had that response [of switching], if Ted hadn’t died,” says his wife, Niki. “And now his images have done a tremendous amount in raising awareness of the environment. We found meaning in Ted’s death because of that.”
Around the same time, the Butchers found a home on the edge of Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp, about fifty miles east of Naples. They opened the Big Cypress Gallery on the front of their property, not expecting much. Instead, they discovered Butcher’s photographs had a resonance for people that drew them willingly off the beaten path.
As Butcher’s photographs became better known and more desired, and as he became increasingly involved with native Florida spaces and a champion of their preservation, he realized that he could do more than simply capture natural scenes artfully. He felt the need to share what the swamp had done for him on a more immersing level. And so he and Niki started their annual Muck-About, a Labor Day weekend series of guided forays into the swamp that the general public could attend.
“People just don’t have a feeling for the Everglades,” Butcher explains. “Unless you physically get into it, you don’t understand. You don’t get to see the interior landscape unless you get out there walking in it. You can’t see it from an airboat or a swamp buggy. You’ve just got to have that connection. People that live in a city, they’re disconnected from nature. And they don’t realize what nature gives them.”
Butcher started his annual swamp walks in 1994. He estimates that only a dozen people signed up that first year. But the word has spread rapidly. In 2008, the walks conducted over the course of three days drew approximately 1,200 people. And each went home with a special—and perhaps new—appreciation of the wildness that is South Florida.
The water is surprisingly clear and cold, a perfect refreshment on a muggy summer day. And that heartbeat Butcher mentions is palpable. There are birds serenading each other or calling warnings. There are insects darting and buzzing. If you’re lucky, you’ll see the pearl-like clusters of apple snail eggs precariously clutching swamp grasses. You’ll smell the freshness that reminds you that nature has its own way of clearing the air. You’ll emerge refreshed, renewed, and, yes, hopeful for the future.
“People come out smiling,” Butcher says. “Now, that is pretty neat. They go in like kind of scared, you know? And they come out with a smile. You’ve made progress. Sometimes it’s difficult, as a human being, to have an abstraction of what nature is important for. But when you see it and if you fall in love with it—it’s dangerous when people fall in love with something. They may even start talking to their Congressman, you never know.”
Black-and-white photography, Butcher explains, is an abstraction rather than the duplication found in color. It forces the viewer to appreciate all the elements on an equal footing, instead of being drawn to the personally most appealing colors. In short, it compels people to think. What he strives for in his art is a sense of place, the feeling that the viewer could easily transport himself to that very spot and experience what it’s like to be there.
“When I’m walking through Florida, what I’m looking for is something that’s just pretty,” Butcher says. “It’s a very spatial feeling that I’m trying to look for. I’m trying to look for a way for people to feel that they’re in the space.”
The swamp walks help people move from viewing to doing. Those who participate are literally immersed in Butcher’s inspiration. And most often, they come to appreciate his work even more, just as they do the natural areas that have given it birth.
The swamp walks have grown so popular that, this year, Butcher has decided to draw back a bit and make them more intimate. So this Labor Day weekend, only 300 to 350 people will be privileged to participate. That intimacy, daughter Jackie says, will allow walkers to hear the sounds of nature in a more peaceful approach. What that means, of course, is that those lucky few will experience a baptismal immersion—something that just could change their entire perspective.
Janina Birtolo is a freelance writer and television producer living in Naples. She also writes and performs one-woman shows based on the lives of historical women.