From Swamp Walks to the Oval Office
Clyde Butcher was speechless, a rarity for a man known for saying what he means and meaning what he says without hesitation.
But there was a reason. The famed photographer and environmental activist had just received the award of a lifetime – the National Medal of Arts.
Butcher, who lives in Venice, is known predominantly for his massive black-and-white photographs of the Everglades. He is often called the Ansel Adams of the Everglades, then later, the Ansel Adams of Florida.
The medal was placed around his neck and fastened by President Joe Biden in the Oval Office. Just Butcher and the president were there. Butcher's wife, Niki, daughter Jackie Butcher Obendorf and son-in-law Neal Obendorf came in afterward for a meet and greet and photographs with the president and First Lady Jill Biden.
The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the federal government. Butcher was one of a group of artists, authors, filmmakers and musical entertainers who received the award. Usually, only 12 awards are given per year, but this was for the years 2022 and 2023, so there were about 22 recipients in all. They received the award on Oct. 21 in a lavish White House ceremony and reception. Other award winners included Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee and Ken Burns.
Clyde's daughter, Jackie, wrote in a Facebook post that after walking out of the Oval Office, Niki asked her husband what he thought.
"I'm speechless," Clyde Butcher said.
In an interview a few days later, Florida Weekly asked Clyde Butcher what the Oval Office was like.
"I don't know," he said.
He doesn't know?
"You just sort of blank out," said Niki Butcher, his wife, who was also at the ceremony.
"We blanked out," Clyde Butcher agreed.
"The presence of the president of the United States and his actual office and – oh my gosh," Niki said.
The experience still seemed surreal.
But Clyde Butcher did remember what he said to the president. He said he walked up to Biden, shook his hand and thanked him for the work he had done on helping find solutions to global warming.
He said Biden replied: "We have a lot more to do. And there's money there to do it."
Clyde Butcher also invited the president to come for a swamp walk in the Big Cypress National Preserve, where the Butchers previously lived for 20 years and where they still have a gallery.
First Lady Jill Biden was standing on the other side and didn't hear the invitation. "So I turned around and said, you're invited for a swamp walk, too," Niki Butcher said. "And they both cracked up laughing."
It wasn't that outlandish an invitation. Clyde Butcher had taken a president for a swamp walk before. President Jimmy Carter once visited the Butchers' home in the Big Cypress and got his introduction to the swamp.
It's part of what Clyde Butcher will do to get the message across to people with political power and influence about saving the Everglades.
He's made it his life's work to shoot his photographs in black and white, photos large enough so it looks as if you can walk into them. Some are as big as 5 feet by 9 feet, but still full of nuance and detail. He is convinced that you need to react emotionally to nature in order to want to preserve it.
"I make my pictures so big you can't see them. You have to experience them," he once told a knot of people standing around him 20 years ago at a Naples exhibit of his work. "That's what I'm trying to do — give you the experience without getting wet."
Clyde Butcher has fiercely advocated for Everglades restoration. Eventually, he expanded his vision to other natural areas across the United States and internationally that need to be preserved.
He has documented the national parks, photographed Cuba's mountains for the United Nations' "Year of the Mountains" and exhibited landscapes of the Czech Republic at the National Gallery of Art in Prague. He has participated in six Public Broadcasting Service documentaries on the Florida environment with filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus and been the subject of a PBS documentary himself. Another movie is in the works.
Clyde Butcher has received many awards in his decades-long career but has never sought them.
"We just do our thing," Clyde Butcher said. "We have never, I think, strived for anything beyond the photography."
"He does what he does because he's passionate about what he does," Niki Butcher said. "He cannot live without doing what he loves. And it doesn't matter if there's no food on the table or anything.
"It's like he does it because he loves it, not because he wants to become famous or he wants to be well-known or he wants people to admire him or any of that," she continued. "And so it came to us as a phenomenal, amazing shock that he was chosen for this award."
At the time, Clyde and Niki Butcher and other family members had evacuated to their home behind the Big Cypress Gallery to escape Hurricane Milton, which was targeting the Sarasota area for landfall.
They were getting ready to return to Venice, where they still had to deal with the aftermath of both hurricanes Helene and Milton, which had caused some damage and flooding at their home. Then the message came that Clyde Butcher had won the award. They didn't believe it at first. They asked their daughter Jackie, who handles the business end of the gallery and the selling of her father's art, to double check.
"We said, 'Call and make sure this isn't, you know, some flukey thing,"' Niki Butcher said. "Then she called and the next morning she came in and she said, 'No, it's real.' And we're going, 'Whoa.'"
They dropped everything in order to be at the White House one week later.
The White House citation for Clyde Butcher's award calls him "America's most acclaimed landscape photographer today."
Clyde Butcher was born on Sept. 6, 1942, in Kansas City, Mo., the only child of Edna and Clyde Sr. His parents nurtured him and gave him unconditional love, Niki Butcher said. The result was a confidence in his ability to do whatever he attempted.
Clyde Sr. was a sheet metal worker who worked on the construction of nuclear power plants. The family moved from place to place to follow his father's work.
Clyde Butcher went to the California Polytechnic State University in San Louis Obispo to study architecture. For one project, he had to build a three-dimensional model and then draw the spaces inside of it.
He couldn't draw. So he built a pinhole camera — he had never built one before — and photographed the model instead.
In 1961 he began dating Niki Vogel. They married on June 15, 1963. He was 20. She was 18.
Clyde Butcher graduated in 1964 and launched his first business with a former classmate, building architectural models.
Two children followed, a daughter and a son. Jackie was born in 1967. Ted was born in 1969.
Clyde Butcher's first business dissolved after about two years. He went to work for an architectural firm and hated it. Eventually, during an economic downturn, he was laid off.
But in his spare time, he had begun taking nature photographs — in black and white. He sold some at a local street art show and continued, but it was the 1970s and he turned to shooting color to make the photos more marketable.
The family traveled to art festivals across the country. At one of the art shows, Clyde Butcher met a wealthy private investor and they went into business marketing his color photographs. They had little clock inserts in them and were sold all over the country in chain stores like JCPenney and Sears.
The business grew, but ended up not being financially viable. In 1978, they sold the business at a loss. The family moved to Florida in 1980.
Niki Butcher loved to check out kitschy Florida roadside attractions. In 1984, the Butchers attended an art festival in Winter Park and visited Tom Gaskin's Cypress Knee Museum on U.S. Highway 27.
Clyde Butcher found a boardwalk at the back of the property that led into a primeval cypress forest – the first time he got a glimpse of the "real" Florida. He started shooting color pictures of the landscape.
The turning point that has defined the Butchers' lives ever since occurred in 1986, with the death of their son Ted at age 17. He was a passenger in a vehicle struck by a drunk driver in Fort Myers.
It was then that Clyde Butcher took to the Everglades wilderness to seek solace for his pain, carrying the black-and-white film and his large-format camera. From then on, he would photograph only in black and white.
He and Niki built a home and gallery in the Big Cypress National Preserve in 1993, surrounded by 729,000 acres of wilderness that are part of the Everglades ecosystem. It was dubbed "Loose Screw Sanctuary" because people said they must have a screw loose to live there. They held swamp walks twice a year to introduce people to the Everglades by literally immersing them in it. The walks, or "muck-abouts," became hugely popular and often had a waiting list.
Clyde Butcher was asked what it means to him that the Big Cypress preserve is now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
"Well, it means that hopefully there will be a 100th," he responded. The goal in taking his massive photographs of the ecosystem over the decades is preservation .
The Butchers moved permanently to Venice in 2010, where they have a second gallery and 2,000-square-foot darkroom.
Clyde Butcher was commissioned by the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg in 2017 to travel to Spain and photograph the landscapes of Salvador Dali's home that influenced the artist in his work. A major exhibit resulted.
But two months after returning from Spain, Clyde Butcher suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. Months of rehabilitation ensued. He had to learn to walk and to sign his name again. But he recovered and now uses a walker and a cane. He had to put down his signature 1945 Deardorff large-format camera and instead began to use a Fuji GFX50s medium format digital camera, with Canon lenses. He continued in his art.
This summer, Clyde Butcher has dealt with several physical challenges, spending time in the hospital and rehab for a knee replacement, a bout of COVID and other medical issues.
Always relentless in following his vision, Clyde Butcher found positivity in the experience. While he was in the hospital, he and a member of his staff discovered a camera maker in Iran that built him a custom camera so that he can return to using film again. He is clearly excited.
"Actually, I was thinking about it," Clyde Butcher said. "And I'm saying to myself, you know, a lot of people said my film work is really unique. I know how to use film like few people do. And I'm saying to myself, you know, if I could find a camera, I want to go back to film because it's a more involved process. It's slow. You've got to use filters."
The new camera is compact and uses roll film. He can do up to 40 X 60 prints with it. It's also the only camera in the world that will take all the lenses that he uses, he said. "This was only invented, I think, in 2022. So even if I wanted to do this when my stroke happened, there was nothing available."
"It's really exciting finding this camera. It was a miracle," he added. "I'm 82 and I'm starting a whole new type of career photography."
His wife interrupted, saying: "As you can see, his passion for photography is greater than his passion for winning awards."
The couple have been married for 61 years and have a bond so close that they finish each other's sentences.
Clyde Butcher dedicated his newest book, "Lifeworks in Photography" to Niki. It's a retrospective of his photography and life, spanning the years 1972 to 2023. That's 51 years of photographs, both professional and personal, following the track of his life and their life together.
The two have endured more than a lifetime of trials and tribulations. At times they lived in a tent trailer, at times the family of four lived aboard a 35-foot sailboat in Newport Beach, Calif., with no electricity. But they endured. And Niki Butcher hopes that is a lesson for other artists who face hard times and think of quitting their art.
"For those people who are artists and who are struggling and love with a passion what they're doing, that is what Clyde was," Niki Butcher said. "And it was hard. We had a rough life. We were hungry sometimes."
"But Clyde loved what he was doing and stuck with it. So for those artists who say, this isn't worth it, I'm going to give it up and go work as a grocery clerk or something, just remember, don't give it up," she said. "You can go work with somebody else, but don't give up your art. Keep doing it because you do not know where it will lead you."
Someday, you might even win a National Medal of Arts. ¦
In the KNOW
Clyde Butcher White House citation
White House citation: For focusing the lens on Mother Nature. From humble beginnings as a self-taught photographer, Clyde Butcher is considered America's most acclaimed landscape photographer today. From the Rocky Mountains to the Everglades and countless pristine places in between, his images inspire and challenge us to respect and defend our natural wonders.
About the National Medal of the Arts
The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the federal government. It is awarded by the president of the United States to individuals or groups who are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts in the United States.
Unlike other arts awards, the National Medal of Arts is not limited to a single field or area of artistic endeavor. It is designed to honor exemplary individuals and organizations that have encouraged the arts in America and offered inspiration to others through their distinguished achievement, support, or patronage.
Recipients of the National Medal of Arts are selected by the president of the United States. Each year, the National Endowment for the Arts initiates the selection process by soliciting nominations for the National Medal of Arts from the public and various arts fields. Nominations are reviewed by the National Council on the Arts, composed of presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed individuals. The National Council's list of nominees is then forwarded to the president for consideration with candidates of the president's own choosing.
In the KNOW
Clyde Butcher galleries and upcoming events:
· Venice Gallery & Studio 237 Warfield Ave. S., Venice, FL 941-486-0811
Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
· Big Cypress Gallery 52388 Tamiami Trail, Ochopee, ours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily
Upcoming events
· Nov. 16
Holiday Book Signing Venice Gallery 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
· Dec. 7
Big Cypress National Preserve 50th Anniversary Celebration Nathaniel P. Reed Festival Grounds 33000 Tamiami Trail E., Ochopee 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
· Dec. 11
