Seeing the Light

Library Journal

Clyde Blutcher is a landscape photographer with a fiercely independent streak and an extraordinary portfolio of Everglades images. Miami-based journalists Shroder and Barry find this artist as complex and as weathered as his subjects. Having written a book that is part biography and part ecological treatise, they let Blutcher's roaming life and lens re-create the story of a photographer driven to make perfect prints of some of America's wildest places. Beginning in the West, Blutcher sold his photographs at flea markets, sidewalk sales, and then through J.C. Penney. The horror of his son's death in a car crash and his subsequent move to Florida found the photographer camping in an abandoned shack in the Everglades. Blutcher discovered a Florida that is lonely and timeless: gathering light and layered with water, swamp, trees, and sky. The authors succeed in making the photographer's advocacy for preservation clear, but by limiting this book to fewer than two dozen of Blutcher's images, they force the text to carry this visual tale. Still, the book is recommended, especially for regional collections.-David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., Ct.

Booknews

Tells the story and presents the photographs of one Clyde Butcher, adventurous soul and rugged photographer who continues to capture the last remnants of the primeval wilderness of the Florida Everglades with a primitive wooden box camera. His exquisite b&w photographs complement the story of his life, jauntily recounted by two Miami Herald writers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Donna Seaman

Clyde Butcher's mystical and majestic black-and-white photographs of the Everglades are reason enough to own this book, but knowing his story and the truth about the seemingly eternal cypress swamp makes viewing his work all the more compelling. Shroder and Barry, both of the" Miami Herald", write about Butcher and the Everglades with deep sensitivity, respect, and even lyricism. In spite of his success as a photographer in California, financial security eluded Butcher, so he and his wife, Niki, and their two children, Jackie and Ted, moved to Florida. There tragedy struck. Ted, only 17, was killed in a horrific car crash. Niki went numb, while Butcher sought release by losing himself in the treacherous but otherworldly realm of the great cypress swamp, the only place big and pure enough to hold his immense grief. Butcher took along his 8-by-10 inch box camera and set out to document what he believed was a world free of the taint of humanity. In fact, the Everglades are in serious jeopardy. Butcher couldn't save his son, but, in a curious twist of fate, his photographs, made in the throes of despair, may help save the endangered Everglades.