Biography
John Fielder (1950-2023)
During his 40-year career as a nature photographer, John Fielder worked tirelessly to promote the protection of Colorado’s ranches, open space, and wildlands as a nature photographer and publisher. He was dedicated to the principle that humanity will not survive without the preservation of biodiversity on Earth. His photography has influenced people and legislation and earned him broad recognition from the environmental and conservation community. His 1992 project to photograph Colorado wilderness influenced passage of Congress’s Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993 for which he was given Sierra Club’s 1993 Ansel Adams Award. In 2011, the Aldo Leopold Foundation gave John its first Achievement Award given to an individual. In 2017, Colorado Mountain College presented him an Honorary Degree in Sustainability Studies. Over 50 books have been published depicting his Colorado photography.
John tirelessly explored and photographed Colorado from 1973 until his death in 2024, and made his living as a professional photographer beginning in 1982. In that time, he effectively visited each of Colorado’s 104,984 square miles within a state 380 miles long by 280 miles tall. His images represent the sublimeness of the place that he has always felt was the most beautiful on Earth. His photographs are both documentary and artistic. John’s goal was always to reveal the essence of a place in the best available light, using design skills honed over 40 years of witnessing extraordinary moments in time of unique lays of the land.
His Colorado photography encompasses 28 mountain ranges, all of the state’s major rivers and remote desert canyons, and to the east its vast Great Plains. During his career, he trekked to the most remote parts of 44 Colorado federal wilderness areas and 11 national forests, most of Colorado’s state parks and wildlife areas, and over 500 local parks, open spaces, and trails across Colorado’s 64 counties. These public lands represent half of Colorado’s square area. John photographed much of the other half, too, Colorado’s private farms and ranches. He explored and documented over 100 of Colorado’s most historical and beautiful ranches and farms ranging in size from 160 to 150,000 acres.
Many of John’s book projects were philanthropic in nature for which John donated his time to photograph various subject matter, and the resources of his publishing house in order to bring books to market to raise awareness and money for non-profit organizations. Colorado, Rivers of the Rockies (1993) helped the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy to promote its river protection program. Rocky Mountain Park: A 100 Year Perspective (1995) attracted resources for the Rocky Mountain Conservancy (formerly the Rocky Mountain Nature Association) to fund land protection of inholdings in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Three books were published about John’s 1998 project in which he made repeat images of William Henry Jackson’s 19th century Colorado photography. Colorado 1870-2000 (1999), Colorado 1870- 2000 II (2005), and Colorado 1870-2000 Revisited (2001) became Colorado’s best-selling books of all time, with over 250,000 copies in print. A large portion of these sales dollars accrued to History
Colorado (formerly the Colorado Historical Society). Established in 1879 as the State Historical Society of Colorado, it has cared for the historic treasures of the state and has directed over a quarter of a billion dollars in grants for statewide preservation and education to all regions of the state. History Colorado’s photography collection contains approximately one million images documenting the history of Colorado and the American West from the 1840s to the present day. Key collections include the largest archive of the work of landscape photographer W.H. Jackson.
In 2009 John published Ranches of Colorado in partnership with Colorado Open Lands and the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust. The book depicted 50 of Colorado’s oldest and most valuable family-owned ranches. Proceeds from book sales helped both of these land trusts protect these and other Colorado ranches and farms from inevitable development.
John was a founder of the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund (GOCO). In the early 1990s he traveled the state promoting passage of a constitutional amendment to redirect Colorado lottery profits to protect existing and create new local and state parks, trails, open space, and private ranches with conservation easements. He was an original GOCO board member from 1993-2000. In 2012 he published a guide book and a picture book Colorado’s Great Outdoors that depicted and promoted the use of over 500 of these places. Since 1992, GOCO has invested a portion of the proceeds from the Colorado Lottery to help outdoor organizations, including local governments, nonprofits, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife complete more than 5,500 conservation and recreation projects in every corner of the state totaling 1.3 million acres.
Denver Mountain Parks Foundation approached John to photograph 14,000 acres of parklands in the mountains and foothills of Jefferson, Clear Creek, Douglas, and Grand counties, west and south of Denver. For more than 100 years, Denver’s Mountain Parks have provided a place for people to explore and recreate in some of Colorado’s most scenic landscapes. Within these lands are 22 accessible parks and 24 conservation areas, including historic cultural institutions such as the Mt. Morrison Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, and world-famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre. John published Denver Mountain Parks: 100 Years of the Magnificent Dream in 2013 to help the foundation with its fundraising activities.
John rafted and photographed all 250 miles of northwest Colorado’s Yampa River in 2013. From the headwaters of the Flat Tops and Mount Zirkel Wilderness areas to the confluence of the Yampa with the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado’s Yampa River: Free Flowing and Wild from the Flat Tops to the Green (2015) celebrated the last remaining undammed river in the Colorado River basin. The book raised money and awareness for a number of organizations including Friends of the Yampa and American Rivers.
In 2019 author Steve Walsh wrote John’s biography for young people John Fielder In Focus. It is a story of John’s life and how his early interest in the outdoors developed into devotion to the preservation of nature. It is also a very personal story about learning life lessons from both failures and successes, overcoming family losses, and working to make the world a better place. It is about always keeping perspective and never forgetting how lucky we are to experience life on Earth.
John believed that it was important to appreciate history and the past. If one does not acknowledge both the failures and successes of one’s actions and existence, there can be no progress moving forward to improve both the human condition and to protect nature. This perspective is analogous to his celebrated project conducted in partnership with History Colorado Colorado 1870-2000 for which he compared W.H. Jackson’s 19th century photographs to his own of the same places as they appeared 100 years later. It was an opportunity for people to see for themselves change for the better or for the worse, lots of change, or no change at all. John suggested that they extrapolate by drawing a straight line from the year 1870 through 2000, and extend it to 2050, even 2100, and ask themselves if they would be happy with what they found in the future. It is in this same spirit that John has donated his life’s work of Colorado photography to History Colorado. It is his hope that the world can use his images of Colorado to better understand the potential impact of a rapidly changing climate upon biodiversity and landscapes all over Earth, and that we make changes in our lives necessary to give future generations the opportunity to enjoy life on Earth as we have.