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Anyone know Clyde Butcher's photographs? No? OK, think Ansel Adams. Butcher is Florida's Ansel Adams.

I bring these two lens artists up because both work without color. And not only is the absence of color a vacation for eyes flooded with neon, television and cereal box shades, but also because black and white is a smashing storyteller. You have only to consider Edvard Munch's woodcuts, which surfaced recently in a Sotheby sale in London. The theme of the woodcuts is a usual one for Munch: separation. But it's the colorless palette that nails it. Not that black and white is always about death. Shapes also tell a story.

Butcher is the kind of photographer who likes to shoot landscapes windless and mist-less. In black and white, his shots stay with you like some mysterious dream. And they're so big that you think you're in them. But no one is ever really in them. Only the wilderness is in them.

My point? You can convey without the embroidery of color. It can be done. It has been done.

Like Adams, famed for photographs of America's West, Butcher's views of Florida – its grasslands, its wetlands and shores – have a primeval, beginning-of-the-world cast. "Little Butternut Key," for example, is an uninhabited strip of sand that stretches limitlessly beneath a stormy sky like some emblem for the infinite. The image conjures up the 19th century painter Caspar David Friedrich's "Monk by the Sea," in which a solitary figure is miniaturized by the mighty swell of the sea. Butcher seems to share Friedrich's mystical feeling for the majesty of nature.

And because our visual world doesn't hold still, and because electronic images assault our peace, "Little Butternut Key" is the pause that refreshes. Which is not to say that the scenery Butcher shoots is always a walk on the beach. "River Rapids" gives you spiky ends of torn plant life silhouetted against rushing water and a distant cypress swamp. The place would make a Martian feel at home.

On difficult days, we can relate to the ragged air of "River Rapids." If "Little Butternut Key" is a metaphor for our serene moments, "River Rapids" might stand for those less smooth. The purity and sharp definitions of Butcher's landscapes, his colorlessness, and his great depth of field slows down the viewing, and makes you look closer.

One may wonder how Butcher, who has an architecture degree, ended up picturing uninhabited land. This old quote from him stops the wondering: "The wilderness, to me, is a spiritual necessity."

Gauguin talked like this, too, which is why he faulted the Impressionists. "They heed only the eye and neglect the mysterious centers of thought, so falling into merely scientific reasoning. When they speak of their art, what is it? A purely superficial thing, full of affectations and only material. In it thought does not exist... It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own; your sensation, your intelligence, and your soul will triumph."

Van Gogh also expressed his spirituality through painting of the Great Outdoors, too, His "Starry Night" shows twisting cypress trees as if they were thrusting themselves heavenward. The descriptive line that forms the trees seem to writhe like flames. As well, Gogh painted the blinding white light of stars with radiating lines so that they look alive and spin through the sky. It is as if he wanted to compel people to marvel and wonder at their celestial beauty.

If those landscapes you're cranking out aren't inviting wonder, if they're not made out of a "spiritual necessity" – black or white or otherwise – you probably need to move on to another subject.

— by Joan Altabe | May 7, 2007

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