ARTIST STATEMENT
I see myself as mixture of documentarian, photographer, digital artist, and printmaker—intertwining my personal connection to the history of the American West and focusing on issues of land-use, recreation, conservation, and the confluence of the natural and human-impacted landscape.
Working with a camera as a way of exploring and documenting the world has always been a personally exciting experience. My creative process starts with a reaction to an idea or simply something seen in the world (which often involves seemingly chaotic aspects within the landscape). Then, through the camera, it transforms into an emotional interaction between myself and the subject. That interaction continues and evolves as I scan the film and work with the image on the computer. Once digitized, I work with image’s tonalities on a purely abstract level, exploring all the film has captured to create or intensify the movement and tension within the image. The final result, while still based on what was actually in front of the lens, becomes part document and part internal creation.
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. I find the purely digital realization of the image ultimately unsatisfying, and output the digital file either as large-scale, immersive pure carbon inkjet prints, or as negatives to use with historic hand-coated photographic processes—effectively bridging the 19th and 21st centuries.
BIOGRAPHICAL
Richard Boutwell, originally from Joshua Tree, California, is a photographer and print-maker based near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His work is based around aspects of archaeology, family history and myth, and the influence of spirituality, technology, and social media on how we interact with the natural environment. Through it, he examines his personal connection to the greater cultural, industrial, and environmental history of the landscape—mostly involving issues of water rights and the impact of recreation in the desert landscapes of the Southwest. In addition to his traditional landscape photography, he is now combining his photographs with 3D scans of the environment, found objects, historical materials, and appropriated mapping and scientific data.
Boutwell began photographing in college in the year 2000 while studying music and pursuing a career as a jazz bassist. Shortly into his first darkroom course and being exposed to the beauty and creative possibilities of fine-art photographs, he dropped all his music classes and devoted himself to studying the history and craft of photography. Instead of pursuing a formal fine-arts degree, he relocated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania to enter an intensive long-term apprenticeship with the photographers Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee. He worked as their darkroom, studio, and field assistant from 2002 until 2008, and then became their full-time printer and ran the scanning and digital studio at their photography book publishing company, Lodima Press, until 2015.
In balance with his family life and fine-art practice, he teaches photography and fine-art printing privately through https:/www.bwmastery.com. Boutwell also created specialized software that helped advance the craft of digital black-and-white and historic-process printing now used by photographers worldwide.
His photographs have been included in national and international group exhibitions and are in private and public collections. He has served as a guest lecturer on the history of landscape photography at mid-Atlantic colleges and universities.
CONTACT
Please feel free to drop me a line with any questions or requests you may have about purchasing original photographs, loans for exhibition, image licensing, and print publication.
I also consider appropriate commissions, collaborations, commercial work, and editorial assignments.
Richard Boutwell
1001 White Horse Pike, Studio 1, Haddon Township, NJ 08107
richard@richardboutwell.com — 215-609-5814
www.richardboutwell.com
Born: Palm Springs, California 1982
Originally from Joshua Tree, California and now living near Philadelphia, I work as a photographer, digital artist, and printmaker focusing on the deserts of the American West and issues of land-use, recreation, conservation, and the confluence of natural and human-impacted landscapes. I merge analog and digital practices by combining large and medium-format film and digital capture, 3D scanning, and appropriated archival and scientific imagery with historic photographic processes and specialized inkjet printing.
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Still Small Voice - Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2016 Remote Sensing - 3rd Street Galley Annex, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2009 The Light Room Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2-3 Person Exhibitions
2026 Dead Pool, InLiquid Arts, 20/20 Photo Festival, Philadelphia
2019 Fractured: Being and Beings, 3-Person Exhibition, Dickinson College, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
2007 Lower Owens River Project, Project Basho, Philadelphia
Selected Exhibitions
2025 The Living Image 2025 - Halide Project - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2023 Climate Changing - Las Laguna Gallery, Laguna Beach, California
2022 The Life of Water - PhotoPlace Gallery - Middlebury, Vermont The Living Image 2022 - Halide Project - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Sage Community Arts - 8th Annual Photography Show, Sheridan, Wyoming
2021 Visions of Nature - LightArt Space, Silver City, New Mexico Photography 40 - Honorable Mention, Perkins Center for the Arts, Morristown, New Jersey
2019 Photography 38 - Perkins Center for the Arts, Morristown, New Jersey
2018 Light Room Annual Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2017 23rd Annual Exhibition - Griffin Museum, Winchester, Massachusetts
2016 Tête-à-Tête: Conversations in Photography, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Bang!Bang! Artists Against Guns, Gaia Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2015 Photographs from 15 Years, LightRoom Annual Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Member Exhibition
Objects of Our Discontent (traveling group exhibition)
- Connexions Gallery, Easton, Pennsylvania
- Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- BH Studio 945, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
2014 Light Room Annual Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2013 Alternatives, Heilongjiang Art Museum, China
2012 Light Room Annual Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Member Exhibition
New Space Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon
2011 Light Room Annual Group Exhibition, 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Onward, Project Basho, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2007 Friends of Project Basho, Project Basho, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania From the Studio IV, The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Publications and Press
2025 Art Watch Radio, WCHE 95.3 FM
2022 F-Stop Collaborate and Listen, Episode 277
2020 Digital Negatives with QuadToneRIP
2018 Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, 3rd Edition
2012 Journal of the Arts, October, 2012
2007 Spotlight: B&W Magazine, Issue No. 53, 2007
Lectures and Talks
2025 Exhibition Lecture, Goodyear Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2023 Guest Lecturer and Workshop, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
2019 Exhibition Lecture, Goodyear Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2018–2017 Guest Lecturer, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey
2016 Lighting Lectures, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania
2009 Winter Art Salon, The LightRoom Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2007 Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
Collections
Various private collections worldwide
Haverford College Library, Haverford, Pennsylvania
Free Library of Philadelphia Print and Picture Collection
Education and Training
2000-2002 Victor Valley College, Photography and Design
2004-2010 Apprenticeship with photographers and publishers Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
2010-2014 Bucks County Community College, Art History and Business