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Photographer Clyde Butcher talks Everglades, Alligator Alcatraz’s influence
Butcher has used his images for the final 40 years to doc and demystify the huge area.
- Renowned Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher, 83, protests the development of a detention middle close to Big Cypress National Preserve, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
- Butcher criticizes the dearth of public enter and environmental assessment for the middle, highlighting the realm’s pure magnificence and contrasting it with politicians’ portrayal of it as a harmful wasteland.
- Having transitioned to black-and-white images after a private tragedy, Butcher’s work goals to showcase the Everglades’ distinctive ecosystem and encourage individuals to expertise its wonders.
Clyde Butcher leaned ahead in a chair below the intense lights of his photograph gallery alongside the Tamiami Trail in Big Cypress National Preserve.
Like a historical past exhibit come to life, Butcher wrangled his liver-spotted fingers as if he had been digging his heals in on the residence plate batter’s field.
But Butcher is not any baseball participant. He’s a photographer. A extremely good one.
And now, at 83, he is dealing with the newest problem in his life, which entails combating towards the Florida detainment camp some individuals name Alligator Alcatraz.
With the glare from the overhead lights reflecting off his glasses, his pale inexperienced eyes softened as he took a deep breath whereas waving his fingers within the air, type of like a conductor.
“There are two subjects that should be explored separately,” Butcher stated. “There’s the detention center and there’s the environment.”
Butcher is speaking about Alligator Alcatraz, probably the most polarizing detention facilities within the nation’s historical past.
The middle is on the interface between the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park, in the course of a number of million acres of untouched tranquility.
The detention middle didn’t undergo a assessment and allowing course of, and there was no public discover or dialogue.
Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency, which allowed him to bypass commonplace authorities practices which have been legislation for many years.
Some politicians have described the realm as a “wasteland” filled with harmful creatures, a spot that folks ought to concern and never discover.
But for Butcher and others, these lands signify among the most interesting in the entire United States.
“I’m trying to let people know how great the cypress swamp is and how great the Everglades is,” Butcher stated. “What got me started was it was presented as a terrible wasteland and these dangerous gators and dangerous snakes. All that’s a lie. The gators aren’t dangerous, and the snakes aren’t dangerous. The only thing that’s dangerous here is people.”
Butcher loves the swampy sloughs and seasonal wetlands that make up a lot of the historic Everglades.
Getting intimate with the Everglades
He’s a giant proponent of driving to a fairly spot within the Everglades, getting out of the automobile and entering into the wooden/water.
Butcher desires individuals to expertise the wonders of this uncommon ecological panorama.
For him and others who hike, boat, wade, swim and fish there, the Everglades is residence, a retreat from the rising coasts, visitors and, earlier than the middle, mild air pollution.
Butcher was first uncovered to the fantastic thing about the Everglades within the Eighties, whereas visiting with a fellow photographer.
“I had never seen anything like that before,” Butcher stated. “I was talking to Oscar Thompson at his studio in Fort Myers and we were looking at negatives and I said, ‘did you go to Africa?’ ‘Oh, you been to the Amazon.’ And he says ‘no, no, no. This is down the street.’ I had been here four years and was really my first time going deep into the Everglades.”
He appeared like half nature information and half fisherman, perhaps a slimmer Santa Claus on safari?
For somebody who clothes considerably drably, Butcher was first identified for his work in explosive shade images.
The transformation to black-and-white
He selected landscapes as a result of “birds and gators,” are, effectively, “eh.”
A household tragedy realigned Butcher’s life to the purpose that he and his household moved to South Florida.
He even stopped taking pictures in shade.
“In 1986, my son was killed by a drunk driver, and I had my last show after he was killed and that was my last color work,” Butcher stated.
But why?
“You can’t see everything for all the color,” he stated.
To heal and advance his artwork, Butcher began going with Thompson to the Everglades, using swamp buggies, airboats and in canoes.
Most of his work was shot whereas merely strolling within the swamp.
Internationally famend for his epic images of the historic Everglades system, Butcher has been capturing stunning and dramatic panorama pictures of the Everglades area for many years.
What is his secret?
“It’s being sensitive to the field,” he stated. “You have to realize, for nature to be healthy, it has to have chaos. Without chaos, it’s not in biological order. So as an artist, you visually organize the chaos. I look for places people want to be. If I want to be there, I set up my camera. It’s that simple.”
Dressed in what has change into the Clyde Butcher commonplace: artificial khaki pants, a long-sleeve button up shirt (untucked), a pair of pale grey loafers and a cowboy hat.
If a human alive at present embodies the Everglades, it is Butcher.
Long gone are the Totch Browns and Nathanial Reeds of the Everglades, influential characters who had been right here throughout the institution of Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve.
And whereas Butcher did not arrive on this space till after the 2 park lands had been shaped, he has been a serious advocate of each conservation areas, which complete greater than 2 million acres.
Butcher’s cowboy hat got here from risqué photographer’s studio
Yellowed and stained with antiquity, his cowboy hat is even an emblem of the Everglades because it got here from Lucky Cole, an artist who serves chilly beer at his residence alongside Loop Road in Pineland.
Cole himself is legendary on this space, principally for serving drinks to bikers and having a taking pictures vary behind his residence.
He’s additionally identified for his risqué images, which is plastered onto each sq. inch of his residence, in and out.
Butcher is understood for his extra modest panorama work, and in latest weeks his long-respected voice has grown even louder.
“I’m pissed off,” Butcher stated when speaking concerning the detention middle. “It’s just not right. For 40 years I’ve tried to convince people that ‘this is where you want to go, this is where you want to walk,’ not some place to be scared of. So, it’s killing my work.”
Butcher has been outspoken about Alligator Alcatraz, Gov. DeSantis and the Trump administration, and he is attended protests and even held public talks at his gallery.
“These guys woke up one morning and said ‘hmmm. If we put this there and call it Alligator Alcatraz we’ll scare people,” Butcher stated. “‘It’s wasteland that’s not good for anything,’ and this is the governor who’s trying to save the Everglades. We put a couple of little generators in here (at the gallery) and it took a year to get a permit ‒ for here. Collier County didn’t even know they were doing this.”
Jackie Butcher Obendorf is the daughter of Clyde and Niki Butcher. She’s additionally the gallery supervisor.
“His voice carries a lot of weight,” she stated. “For him, it’s been heart-breaking. It may be six miles down the road, but we still feel it here. The traffic and the light pollution and the animals haven’t been the same since it opened.”
She stated the household is united in defending the Big Cypress and persevering with to struggle the detention middle.
“The Everglades is not a scary place,” she stated. “The message we want to get out is that the Everglades is beautiful and full of love. We’re all one in this. When you love something, you don’t want to trample it.”
Butcher’s name to responsibility
Franklin Adams lives in Golden Gate Estates and was one of many key figures who increase the preliminary cash to buy the Big Cypress National Preserve.
Adams stated individuals like Marjory Stoneman Douglas had been mentors to him, his family and friends.
Douglas is well-known for advocating or Everglades National Park, maybe probably the most identified determine within the park’s historical past.
But Douglas is gone, so it is as much as Adams, Butcher and others to hold on the custom of conservation in south Florida.
“The fact that he’s showed up to the protest is very, very helpful,” Adams stated. “He’s been a voice through his art, and I really appreciate what he’s done. With a lot of people, you have to reach them through their eyes and minds, and Clyde has done that. He has reached a lot of people.”
Niki Butcher is a widely known photographer, too
Butcher’s spouse, Niki Butcher, is a proficient photographer in her personal proper, and he or she’s simply as passionate concerning the protect and the controversial detention middle.
“When he first started photographing to save the Everglades, he didn’t realize he was photographing it to save it,” she stated whereas taking a break inside their studio within the Big Cypress.
They’ve been within the Big Cypress for 40 years, they usually’ve been married since 1963.
Niki Butcher described her husband as a enjoyable particular person to be round, a kind-hearted one that repeatedly offers away a few of his for academic and conservation functions.
“We’ve been relieved, and we’ve sat back and enjoyed ourselves and doing it again and we’re old,” she stated. “We didn’t do it to become popular. We did it because it was in our heart.”
“We knew we couldn’t sell anything in black-and-white,” Clyde chimed in. “I’d do $10,000 a weekend (doing color shows in the Miami area) and guys doing black-and-white were making $300. People thought I was crazy.”
Where to see Clyde and Niki Butcher
The well-known photograph couple hosts common meetups at their galleries in Venice and the Big Cypress.
Both Clyde and Niki might be on the Venice Gallery (237 Warfield Ave. S., Venice) from 10 a.m. to three p.m. on Oct. 4.
They’ll even be accessible on the Big Cypress Gallery (52388 Tamiami Trail, Ochopee) from 10 a.m. to three p.m. on Nov. 1
Clyde Butcher’s subsequent main exhibit takes place on the The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature (201 tenth St. W., Bradenton) between Dec. 12 and March 9, 2026.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its authentic location you may go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/environment/2025/09/03/a-voice-for-the-wasteland-who-is-florida-artist-clyde-butcher/85241248007/
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