Clyde Butcher’s photographs are measured in feet, not inches, and his big reputation matches his big images.
Ocala is lucky enough to be the temporary home of his exhibit, America’s Everglades: Through the Lens of Clyde Butcher, featured at the Appleton Museum of Art for the next few months.
If you’re not familiar with his name, chances are you’ve seen his work. Butcher has been capturing stunning black-and-white images of Florida landscapes since the 1980s, when he moved to South Florida from 
California, eventually building a home and gallery in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Ocala Style Creative Director Maureen Fannon remembers Butcher as the preeminent exhibitor at Miami’s Coconut Grove Arts Festival in the 1990s, when the art world began referring to him as “the Ansel Adams of the Everglades.”
“Everyone asked about the ‘man with the beautiful black-and-white photographs of the Everglades,’” Fannon recalls. “He would sit quietly at his booth with a gentle and easy demeanor but a very intense stare. You definitely walked away with an insight into the love, grit and determination it took to get those magnificent images.”
Butcher is revered as the foremost landscape photographer in America today. His powerful images reveal the tiniest details of Florida’s ecosystems–from sawgrass prairies to wetlands, windswept beaches and mangroves to cypress-lined rivers.
America’s Everglades: Through the Lens of Clyde Butcher is on display at the Appleton Museum of Art through May 26 and is included with museum admission. For more information, visit appletonmuseum.org.
