Photographic Meditations Between Nature and Built Environment  

Spanish Point’s Clyde Butcher: Nature through the Lens

Reviewed by Anneliese Hardman

Selby Gardens’ Historic Spanish Point campus is one of the largest preserves in Sarasota Country, showcasing native Florida plants alongside five-thousand years of Florida history. It is thirty-three-acres of waterfront property, featuring a regional museum, nineteenth-century heritage buildings, and archeological finds of the pre-Columbian Manasota culture. Historic Spanish Point highlights the intersection of Florida’s natural world of native plants living congruously with built human environments. The relationship between natural and manmade environments is further underscored in the current exhibition, Clyde Butcher: Nature through the Lens. Butcher’s iconic black and white landscape works of Florida are, for the first time, placed within natural environments like the ones they capture. Mural-sized photographs printed upon aluminum are exhibited throughout the gardens in a way that mediates the natural and built environment of Spanish Point and brings new meaning to both.

Butcher is an American landscape photographer often compared to Ansel Adams. Like Adams, Butcher is renowned for his black and white images but specifically for his pictures of Florida wildernesses. Originally from Kansas City, MO, Butcher began photographing Florida’s diverse ecosystems upon moving with his family to Fort Lauderdale, FL in 1980.  Inspired by the artworks of Hudson River School painters, Butcher’s works are frequently described as pristine and untarnished. When contextualized within an outdoor environment like Spanish Point though, their meaning is expanded.

The exhibition’s photographic subjects showcase Florida’s manifold ecologies, including South Florida swamplands, coastal regions in the Florida panhandle, and the barrier islands and mangrove forests located in Southwest Florida. Specific Florida flora and fauna detailed in Butcher’s photographs include the American alligator, clamshell and ghost orchids, Grand Oaks, and Corkscrew Sunflowers. Through these works, Butcher hopes to “inspire [viewers] to love and protect [the] environment for generations to come.”

The first photograph visitors to Spanish Point see in the Clyde Butcher: Nature through the Lens exhibition is titled Clyde Butcher (Figure 1). The image is located a short walk from the visitor pavilion along a path ringed by low hanging tree branches and epiphytes. Walking through this environment primes visitors to notice similar plant species depicted in Figure 1. This self-portrait of Butcher portrays him within a swamp located near his Big Cypress Gallery in Ochopee, FL. Butcher is shown studying the environment around him, which encourages viewers to do the same throughout their visit to Spanish Point.

Spanish Point’s heritage sites include Indigenous middens and burial mounds, a pioneer cemetery, a chapel and homestead-era orange-packing house, and two different restored house museums dating to the 1800s. The Manasota people left the area in 2000 BCE, and the Webb family settled on the peninsula in 1867. The Webbs made their living through citrus and sugar cane farming, boat building, and, ultimately, by opening the Webb’s Winter Resort. In 1910, Bertha Honoré-Palmer expanded upon this resort enterprise, purchasing Spanish Point and thousands of acres in surrounding Sarasota County. In 1982, Spanish Point was converted into an outdoor interpretive museum and became the first site in Sarasota County to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, visitors come to Spanish Point to learn about Florida history, enjoy its environmental offerings, and appreciate the rotating art exhibitions staged on the grounds.

Butcher’s photographs allow museumgoers to view Spanish Point’s natural and built environment in juxtaposition with what they see in Butcher’s large-scale prints. Ranging in size from roughly 5 ft by 2 ft to 3 ft by 4 ft, the photographs make an impression and inspire close looking. Photographic mediation draws special attention to past and present lifeforms apparent at Spanish Point. For example, Butcher’s Ghost Orchid Twin 2 (Figure 2) is placed across from a pioneer graveyard and by Mary’s Chapel. The pioneer cemetery is where members of the Webb family are interred alongside many of their neighbors. Mary’s Chapel, built in honor of Mary Sherril who died of tuberculosis while staying at the Webb’s Winter Resort, is carefully restored and neatly maintained (Figure 4).

Placement of Figure 2 by these memorial sites recalls the ghost orchids’ own threatened existence. In the past, the ghost orchid would commonly grow in cypress swamps and palm trees. However, it has since become a rare and endangered species in South Florida due to habitat destruction and hydrological changes. Butcher’s photograph captures the ghost orchid’s mass of tangled roots attaching it to the trunks and branches of trees. A similar swatch of grand oaks is located behind the placement of the artwork, signaling visitors to turn their gaze upwards and look overhead for the declining plant.

Looking at photographs in a climate-controlled gallery or museum often divorces art meaning from its true context. Exhibiting Butcher’s art in a non-traditional museum setting, like a nature preserve, allows viewers to explore the artwork not just visually, but with also their senses of sound, smell taste, and touch. As a result, meaning making comes to life and visitors are better able to understand Butcher’s photographs and Spanish Point as a historic site more deeply.

The exhibition curates a sensorial experience that allows visitors to appreciate the surrounding physical environment in multiple ways. Butcher’s photographs of Matlacha Pass (Figure 5) and Indian Key 5 (Figure 6) are displayed at an overlook point of Little Sarasota Bay. Figure 5 exudes the calm feeling evoked when one looks out over a peaceful body of water on a sunny day. This feeling is palpable in the setting of Spanish Point as visitors feel a light breeze, hear lapping water, and taste saltiness in the humid air. Figure 6 presents a beach island with heaped driftwood and a watery backdrop, mirroring the coastal setting. As visitors take a closer look at the photograph, their shoes crunch on shell sand and they smell a salt breeze. These sensorial aspects of viewing Butcher’s images transform their environmental subjects into reality.

The exhibition has a low barrier for entry, allowing children and adult visitors alike to engage with the exhibition material. This participatory culture is fostered through sensory experience that enhances interpretation. A deeper sense of place is also fostered through inclusion of art that specifically references local sites in Sarasota Country. For example, Butcher’s Casey Key 5 (Figure 7) was taken off the Barrier Island of Venice, Florida, located only five miles from Spanish Point. Similarly, Butcher’s Myakka Oak 20 (Figure 8) photo was also taken locally at Myakka River State Park, which is only fifteen miles away from where the image is displayed. These popular local sites create a point of reference for viewers to then apply lived experience and memory to their viewing. Connecting new learning to past personal experience is key for effective meaning making in the museum setting.

Photography portrays subject matters through a certain lens—just as the title of the exhibition suggests. With Butcher’s legendary works curated to the backdrops of both native Florida sceneries and historic sites, Clyde Butcher: Nature through the Lens helps visitors appreciate Butcher’s work in unique ways. The exhibit effectively draws upon local histories about Spanish Point’s natural and built environment. This accomplishes Butcher’s vision of promoting visitor respect for Florida’s unmatched natural environments. Beyond newfound value, visitors also gain a greater sense of how Spanish Point’s natural environment engages with its built one. Setting and artwork become entangled and productive moments for unforgettable immersion in past and present Florida culture is facilitated.

Clyde Butcher: Nature Through the Lens
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ Historic Spanish Point Campus

401 North Tamiami Trail, Osprey, FL 34229

selby.org
November 11, 2023 through August 31, 2024

Anneliese Hardman is a museum enthusiast from Sarasota, FL, who has worked domestically and internationally in museums of all types including art museums, castles, botanical gardens, historic homes, libraries, nature centers, and national parks. She has her MA in Museum Studies from Florida State University and is currently working towards her PhD in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago.