Few Americans have experienced the Everglades, a freshwater habitat larger than the state of Connecticut and the most famous wetland on Earth. A national treasure, a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve, it is more commonly called by a much less prestigious name – a swamp.
Vast, mysterious, inhabited by ominous creatures and seemingly impenetrable, the Everglades is literally America’s Amazon. And, like its South American counterpart, the Everglades is a complex and endangered series of ecosystems threatened by greed, ignorance and human folly. Yet, it is also a magical, mystical and otherworldly sanctuary for plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. This is the abundant and ethereal world of Clyde Butcher, one of America’s greatest living photographers, who is often compared to the legendary Ansel Adams. In his large-scale, black and white photography, Clyde takes us deep into the Everglades and immerses us in his environment – one of the last, great places in the United States. Using a large format camera seldom seen in our modern, digital world, Clyde literally wades into the Everglades to bring us “pictures worth more than a thousand words.” He has spent a lifetime capturing moments in time in places secluded and serene. What he gives us is not “a swamp,” but a virtual Garden of Eden within our own country. In The Everglades: America’s Amazon, Clyde culminates his decades-long photographic expedition to chronicle every part of the Everglades. From languid estuaries to pinpoint still-lives of rare species, Clyde reveals its ecosystems in magnificent detail. He makes an unquestionable case for why we should care about its future. As an early proponent of the Everglades restoration stated, “The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet.” |