Photographer John Fielder shares his life's work with History Colorado, and we can all be thankful
When you spend time in the great outdoors, your perspective often changes. That has certainly been true for Colorado nature photographer and conservationist John Fielder, who is battling cancer.
Fielder has spent a lifetime capturing the beauty of the Rocky Mountain in thousands of remarkable photos. His eyes and cameras have recorded images that show majesty of mountains...
The whisper of winter...
... and the rebirth of spring.
Along the way, Fielder has learned from nature's timeless cycles of life, and he's putting the lessons he's learned to use now as a matter of necessity.
Reporter Barry Petersen first met Fielder in 2015 in Rocky Mountain National Park for a report on CBS Sunday Morning, long before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He said "I never get tired of being in places like this" and called it "his medicine." He said it gets better every single time he visits. That was a big statement for someone who had at that time visited the breathtaking park in northern Colorado more than 100 times.
History Colorado is now showcasing some of his work in an exhibit at the History Colorado Center in Denver called "REVEALED: John Fielder's Favorite Place." History Colorado in their description of the exhibit says Fielder has "embraced the incredible solace to be found in spaces of complete vulnerability, and captured the magic of the moment."
It's one of a series of exhibits that will be coming to the museum in future years thanks to a massive gift from Fielder. Fielder went through 200,000 of his transparencies and winnowed them down to 7,000 negatives showcasing the best of his work. He's donating all of those 7,000 to History Colorado.
"40 years ago all I wanted to do was one thing, and that is quit my department store job cold turkey. And with a wife and child and another one on the way turn my passion and hobby -- photography -- into a new career," Fielder said. "And I pulled that off."
Fielder's pictures and calendars have drawn thousands to the wilderness. Unfortunately, some of those people have damaged the beloved nature he photographed. But now he believes they will also help nature survive.
"If you don't smell it -- the smell of decaying aspen leaves in the fall. Taste it -- the taste of that cold, metallic, freshly melting snow water up high at 12,000 feet. You don't listen to the hummingbirds in the meadow at 11,000 feet ... you never really develop an appreciation for the sensuousness of nature and the fact that this is a 4.3 billion year process of evolution."
"In our American democracy that's why we've protected more wilderness than any other country on the planet. And I want people to vote that way and unless they care, they won't do it."
Fielder now faces a greater challenge than any he faced in nature.
"You have probably seen as much as any man of nature -- birth, life, death," Petersen asked Fielder in a visit to his house recently. "I sometimes have the sense talking to you, John, that it informs the way you are approaching death as part of life. Help me understand this."
"My mind always tends to think scientifically, you know, logically and deductively and analytically," Fielder said. "Trying to understand what's around me. Living in a moment sounds like a cliche, but living in the moment, living in the present is medicine for me. And it allows me to appreciate the past and the future by always being focused on what I've been given today. Not yesterday or the day before."
What Fielder has given today is for all of us. Those 7,000 photographs in the History Colorado collection "John Fielder's Colorado Collection" will be for anyone to freely browse and download.
"You know, I never felt that I owned my photos. I felt that was kind of selfish," he said.
Fielder hopes his photos will inspire more people to be conservationists. He also says they can serve as a benchmark for those who document climate change, since he has captured natural areas at specific moments in time over the recent decades.