Announcing the 2019 the LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award

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Leadership Florida® Presents Clyde Butcher with the LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award

Tallahassee, Fla. — Photographer Clyde Butcher has been chosen as the 2019 recipient of Leadership Florida’s LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award. This award recognizes an individual who has gone above and beyond by using his or her leadership abilities over a lifetime to improve the quality of life for Florida’s citizens and its future generations. The award was renamed in 1991 in honor of the late Governor LeRoy Collins.

Butcher was honored at Leadership Florida’s 2019 Annual Meeting held at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort in Orlando June 21.

Clyde Butcher, winner of the 2019 LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award

“Clyde Butcher’s works depicting Florida landscapes have become iconic,” said the award nominator Christine Johnson, President of the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast and member of Leadership Florida’s Calusa Region. “He has been called the ‘Ansel Adams of our day,’ and his photographs of Florida introduced the world to Florida’s natural beauty.”

In the tradition of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School painters, Butcher composed his works at pristine and untarnished locations across the United States. His love of boating brought him to Florida in the 1980s where he nurtured the environmental conservation movement for Florida's Everglades, springs, and beaches.

“His spectacular black and white photos created a seismic shift in the way Floridians and the world perceived swamps, wetlands and undeveloped land, successfully demonstrated that a medium like photography can—and does—make a convincing platform for art and environmental conservation and advocacy,” said Johnson.

 Leadership Florida is proud to recognize Clyde Butcher with the 2019 LeRoy Collins Lifetime Achievement Award.