about colin winterbottom

Romantic and haunting, dramatic and serene, Colin Winterbottom's photographs offer a fresh perspective on the nation's capital. Rather than documenting the city as we see it day-to-day, Winterbottom combines a heightened sensitivity to place with compelling compositions and unique perspectives to infuse the urban landscape with mood and challenge the prevailing (and rather stale) sense of the city. He has applied the same vision to his photographs of New York, more limited studies of Paris and Moscow, and series featuring other areas of the U.S.

A self-taught photographer, Colin has gained recognition over the last dozen years, and is now one of the area's prominent fine arts photographers. Mr. Winterbottom has been awarded several fellowship grants from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, a juror’s choice award from National Geographic photo editor David Griffin, and an award from Black and White magazine. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Washington-area galleries, including The Alla Rogers Gallery, the Zenith Gallery, Vastu, the Ellipse Gallery and others.  The Smithsonian Institute has included his work in it's Photographic History Collection, the oldest museum-based collection of photography in America.

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), National Parks, Historic Traveler, and Where Washington, and to illustrate infamous DC spy sites in installations at the International Spy Museum. 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 Nixon Peabody, Fleishman Hilliard, The Carlyle Group, American Bankers Association, Grant Thornton, Sprint Communications, P. N. Hoffman, General Dynamics, the New York HIlton, Hogan and Hartson, among others.

Mr. Winterbottom grew up in the Washington suburbs and has lived in the city for nearly twenty years. He received degrees in economics and social policy and worked as a research assistant at the Urban Institute for eight years before committing himself to photography full-time.

Selected Press Clippings:
Profile in the Hill Rag:  pdf
Washington Post Arts Beat 1996: pdf
Notice of Exhibit in The Express: pdf