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Summary

"I have always felt that one of the most rewarding aspects of photography and printmaking is the handmade aspect of creating something with light, drawing from physical qualities of the interaction of light and metal salts that give the print an inherent potential to be a beautiful object regardless of the subject that is actually photographed."
-Richard Boutwell

Richard Boutwell, originally from the High Desert of Southern California, lives and works as a photographer and printmaker outside of Philadelphia in South Jersey. Instead of pursuing a traditional academic education in photography, Boutwell relocated to Bucks County in 2002 for an intensive apprenticeship with the photographers Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee. He worked closely with them in the field and darkroom, absorbing as much as possible, while independently studying the historic and theoretical aspects of the medium and continues to be their primary studio assistant. His photographs have been included in national and international group exhibitions and are in a number of public and private collections. He has taught photography privately and has served as a guest lecturer at Wesleyan University. He now writes and teaches photography and digital technique through the website, Black and White Mastery. He continues to work with a camera and the darkroom, but also has taken to making new bodies of work where he makes digital negatives on clear films fed through an inkjet printer and subsequently prints through traditional darkroom techniques.

Boutwell's personal work, originally influenced by early twentieth century modernists, shifted as he was exposed to the work of the New Topographics, along with the work of the nineteenth century colonial expedition and geological survey photographers. This led him to begin investigating his personal connection to the greater cultural, industrial, and environmental history of the landscape mostly involving issues of water rights in the West, and the impact of recreation on the desert landscape in his native California. His current bodies of work incorporate found objects informed by aspects of archaeology and anthropology and large-scale manipulations of appropriated mapping and scientific images.

Career

Major Exhibitions
Remote Sensing: Rising Tides (2016), Imij Gallery, Easton, Pennsylvania, 2016
Remote Sensing 2008-2013, Light Room Annual Group Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2016
Tete-a-Tete: Conversations in Photography, Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2016
Mojav Desert Artifacts Bang! Bang! Artists Against Guns, Gaia Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, 2016
Mojave Desert Artifacts, Objects of Our Discontent, Connexions Gallery, Easton, Pennsylvania, 2015
Remote Sensing, Alternatives, Heilongjiang Art Museum, China, 2013
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Juried Exhibition, 2012

Major Collections
Haverford College library
Free Library of Philadelphia Print and Picture Collection

Publications
Spotlight, B&W Magazine, Issue No. 53, 2007
Remote Sensing, Journal of the Arts, October, 2012


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