A self-taught photographer, Colin Winterbottom is one of the area’s prominent fine arts photographers. Now thirty-four years old, Mr. Winterbottom has been awarded a grant from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to support further development of his portfolio of Washington images. He has participated in several solo and group shows in Washington-area galleries, including The Alla Rogers Gallery, the Wilson Center Gallery, Project Space Gallery, Gallery 2000, Rivaga Gallery, and the Ellipse Gallery.

Romantic and haunting, dramatic and serene, Colin Winterbottom’s photographs offer an artistically fresh perspective on the nation’s capital. Combining compelling compositions with night lighting, adverse weather, and the effects of infrared films, his photographs infuse the urban landscape with an ethereal quality and strong emotional content.

Mr. Winterbottom and his photography have been profiled in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, The Washington Blade, and Metro Weekly. His photographs have been reproduced to illustrate articles in Preservation (the magazine of The National Trust for Historic Preservation), Historic Traveler, and Where Washington.

His work is in many public and private collections, including Washington DC’s Art in Public Places collection and the Mayor’s gift collection. Private and corporate collectors include General Dynamics, the Westin Grand Hotel, Hogan and Hartson, among others.

Mr. Winterbottom grew up in the Washington suburbs and has lived in the city for a dozen years. He received degrees in economics and social policy from area universities and worked in policy research for several years before devoting himself to photography full-time. Mr. Winterbottom plans to publish a book of his photographs reflecting on Washington as both a symbol-rich federal city and a locally-textured urban center. His recent exhibition at Alla Rogers Gallery previews this synthesis. Mr. Winterbottom has photographed other urban centers, including New York, Moscow, and Paris, as well as rural areas of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware.

Washington's architecture and landscapes have been the nearly exclusive subject of my art. My artistic development has tended innately toward a single mission: to change the way people look at the American capital -- both as a federal city rich in mythic symbols of national identity, and as a unique urban center and home to many communities.

Images of Washington too often take on the look of soulless postcard shots. I have sought to challenge this prevailing and limiting interpretation through both style and content. Stylistically, I seek to combine compelling compositions with night lighting, adverse weather, and the effects of infrared films, creating textured images that are romantic and haunting, dramatic and serene. I search for unusual perspectives, conditions, or unexpected relations of light and subject to suggest new meaning beneath the veneer of monumental Washington. My unique study of the federal city has been enhanced by exclusive invitations to document recent renovations of some of Washington's most prominent structures. I was the only independent photographer to shoot the refurbishment of the Washington Monument from within the unprecedented scaffolding structure, and the only private photographer allowed to document the restoration of the US Capitol dome, during which time I was given rare access to the dome and its interstitial structures.

Critical to my interests, however, is to broaden awareness of Washington as an urban center by exploring and photographing the city beyond its circumscribed officialdom. Photographing the larger urban context requires the sifting through of neighborhoods both graceful and gritty, public spaces, public art, cemeteries, industry and infrastructure to discover the more subtle textures beyond the federal city. My study of Washington's urban character have also benefited from access to unusual locations. As new construction in the city proceeds at a rapid pace, I have been invited to explore several sites including the skeletal cage of Washington's future convention center and a historic Georgetown incinerator being converted into a luxury hotel. I have also been granted rare access to photograph the largely abandoned west campus of St. Elizabeth's, the city's historic mental institution.

It is easy to consider Washington's dual character as parts wholly segregated - Washington for the politicians and tourists, and Washington for those who call the city home. While this duality certainly exists, neither aspect alone is Washington. The true Washington can only be found in the integration of these aspects. This, I believe, is my unique contribution to the larger body of Washington photographs. Mine is a perspective born of a nurtured sensitivity to the emotional and spiritual content found not only in the intentional symbolic importance of monuments, but the quiet grandeur of local textures. In short, I seek to study the whole city, without judgment or differentiation, to represent these distinct aspects through a deeply personal, consistent, and enthusiastic vision.