Seeing the Light:: Wilderness and Salvation: A Photographer's Tale

by Tom Shroder

Well known in the West, Clyde Butcher's successful landscape portraits of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Badlands provided him with money and acclaim. But, in something of a midlife crisis, he moved to Florida's Gulf Coast--and lost himself in the Everglades. These stunning photos present a wonderful keepsake record of Butcher's time in this beautiful area.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

143 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 1995

Reviews

[Karyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Everglades and Florida are fast disappearing, surviving in an unrecognizable and degraded state that each year demoralizes each of us that have been here for many decades.

Clyde Butcher has been the preeminent photographer of the Everglades and as breathtaking and beautiful as his photographs are, he tells us that the images are lies because even a vast wilderness prairie is no longer sawgrass but invasive cattails.

Miami Herald journalists have presented us with the lives of Clyde and his wife Niki, full of all the beauty and the pain of living that generously preserves a vision of life itself, caught in the brief and fleeting moment.

[Ken Lindholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I noticed Seeing the Light from a GR review of a friend of a friend. Living in southwest Florida, I’ve seen many of Clyde Butcher’s photographs and met him at his studio and gallery in Venice FL. A few years ago, the Dali Museum engaged him to travel to Spain to photograph Dali’s home region. Only last year, Selby Gardens used his photographs printed on metal to do an outdoor exhibition on the grounds of Historic Spanish Point. This book was written decades ago, in the mid 1990’s, when Clyde was in his early fifties. It will miss many more photos that he took since its publication, but the book focuses on his earlier life that led to his career in photography.

I was surprised to learn that Butcher grew up in Kansas, and lived in California long before he settled in Florida where his most renowned photographs would be taken. In the past, I thought that photographers like Clyde Butcher or Ansel Adams led a charmed life - able to earn a good living while experiencing the beauty of nature. Life, however, is not so simple. Butcher for many years barely scraped by, and at one time had to declare bankruptcy. In addition, he and his wife Niki experienced a significant personal tragedy. (Watching a documentary years ago, I learned Ansel Adams was once so stressed that he suffered a mental breakdown.)

Authors Tom Shroder and John Barry were journalists with the Miami Herald. In Seeing the Light, they describe the story of Butcher’s struggles to obtain peace and achieve his dreams. I enjoyed this excellent book, learning so much more about Clyde and Niki Butcher beyond his photographic legacy.

For those interested, Seeing the Light is inexpensively available in used copies through Amazon (and probably other providers).

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book about the life and career of Clyde Butcher, a landscape photographer whose black & white images of Florida have helped focus attention on saving the Everglades. I bought one of Clyde's hand printed images over 20 years ago at an arts festival in Atlanta before he was famous. The book is an interesting mix of Clyde's life with his wife Niki and the characters he encountered in the Big Cypress National Preserve while trying to rescue his own life.