Colin Winterbottom

Romantic and haunting, dramatic and serene, Colin Winterbottom’s photographs offer a fresh perspective on the nation’s capital. His photos seek to express not just what a place looks like, but how it feels to be there. He has applied the same sensibility to his photographs of New York, more limited studies of Paris and Moscow, and series featuring other areas of the US. At the core of most Winterbottom photographs is an interest in vivid textures and composition driven by dynamic tension between subjects in the frame. Winterbottom generally scans his film and makes his own large format prints using archival digital methods. This mix of analog capture and digital output draws on the strengths of traditional contemporary methods.

Winterbottom’s most recent projects build on years of working from historic preservation sites, and especially from scaffolding erected to facilitate stone repairs. He has photographed preservation of the Washington Monument, the US Supreme Court, the US Capitol, the National Archives building, St. Elizabeths Hospital, and the Washington National Cathedral. Winterbottom has received awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, National Geographic photo editor David Griffin, and Black and White magazine. He has shown throughout the Washington region and has work in the Smithsonian Institution’s Photographic History Collection, as well as other public and private collections. Winterbottom grew up in the Washington suburbs, earned degrees in economics and social policy, and worked as a research assistant at the Urban Institute for eight years before committing to photography full-time.