As a photographer and printmaker I know the feeling holding a print in your hands and being fully satisfied. It goes deeper than just a nice looking print. It is the realization of a personal vision that brings that satisfaction. I also know how frustrating it can be to hold something in your hands that falls short of that realization. I have worked for severally years discovering and refining the things that have allowed me to create work that is truly satisfying to me, and now I want to teach photographers the tools to reach the full potential of their vision as well.

Biography

Richard Boutwell, originally from Joshua Tree, California, is a photographer and printmaker based near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 2002, Boutwell relocated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania to enter an intensive apprenticeship with the photographers Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee. He worked as their assistant in the field, studio, and darkroom until 2008. He then became their full-time printer and ran the scanning and digital studio at their photography book publishing company, Lodima Press, until 2015.

His photographs have been included in national and international group exhibitions and private and public collections. He has served as a guest lecturer on the history of landscape photography at mid-Atlantic colleges and universities.

Boutwell's personal work, originally influenced by early 20th-century modernists, shifted as he was exposed to the work of the New Topographics, along with the work of the 19th 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 in the desert landscapes of the Southwest.

His current bodies of work are informed by aspects of archeology, family history and myth, and the influence of technology and social media on how we interact with the natural environment.In addition to his traditional landscape photography, he is now combining those photographs with found objects, historical materials, and appropriated mapping and scientific data.

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