Eliot Furness Porter (December 6, 1901 – November 2, 1990) was an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

best known for his color photographs of nature.Amon Carter Museum
Eliot Porter collection guide.
Retrieved September 12, 2008.

Early life and education

Porter credited his father, James Porter, with instilling in him a love for nature as well as a commitment to scientific rigor. An amateur photographer since childhood, Eliot Porter found early inspiration photographing the birds on Maine's Great Spruce Head Island owned by his family.Exhibition brochure Porter earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemical engineering from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

and a

Doctor of Medicine Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin language, Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a profes ...

from

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

, and remained at Harvard after graduation as a medical researcher.Amon Carter Museum
Biography of Eliot Porter.
Retrieved September 12, 2008. One of Eliot Porter's five siblings was the painter and art critic

Fairfield Porter Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photo ...

Career

Fairfield Porter introduced his older brother to photographer and gallerist

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...

in about 1930. Stieglitz, after seeing Porter's work, encouraged Porter to work harder. Finally, in 1938, Stieglitz presented Porter's work, taken with a

Linhof Linhof is a German company, founded in Munich in 1887 by Valentin Linhof. The company is well known for making premium rollfilm and large format film cameras. Linhof initially focused on making camera shutters and developing the first leaf shu ...

view camera, in his

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

gallery, ''An American Place''. The exhibit's success prompted Porter to pursue photography full-time.Exhibition catalog Porter became interested in colour photography after a publisher rejected a proposal for a book on birds because black and white images wouldn't clearly differentiate the species. Porter began working with a new color film,

Kodachrome Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years Kodachrome was widely used ...

, introduced in 1935, but it presented considerable technical challenges, especially for capturing fast-moving birds. Drawing on his chemical engineering and research background Porter experimented extensively until he was able to produce satisfactory images. His bird photographs were exhibited in 1943, the first ever exhibition of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His book ''American Birds: 10 Photographs in Color'' was published in 1953. His solo exhibition at Limelight Gallery, NYC., March 21-April 17 1955 was effectively a retrospective of this work. For twenty years, Porter pursued a project to publish nature photographs combined with quotes from works by

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural su ...

. Not until an associate introduced him to the executive director of the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...

did Porter find a willing publisher. His 1962 book, ''In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World'' featured Porter's color nature studies of the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

woods. The book enjoyed considerable success despite its high price, pioneered the genre of the nature photography coffee-table book, and lead to several other titles by Porter in a similar format published by the Sierra Club and others. It increased Porter's reputation greatly, and he served as a director of the Sierra Club from 1965 to 1971. He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1971. In 1979 the work of Eliot Porter was exhibited in Intimate Landscapes, the first one-person show of color photography at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This exhibition earned Porter praise as the individual who brought credibility to color photography as a medium of fine art. The image selection defined what is now meant by the term “intimate landscape”: the close-range, quiet compositions of natural elements with muted colors and dense textures, meditative and dense with layered meanings, which were the hallmark of Porter's work at the exclusion of more expansive and spectacular landscapes. Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places. He published books of photographs from

Glen Canyon Glen Canyon is a natural canyon carved by a length of the Colorado River, mostly in southeastern and south-central Utah, in the United States. Glen Canyon starts where Narrow Canyon ends, at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Dirty D ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands (Spanish: , , ) are an archipelago of volcanic islands. They are distributed on each side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean, surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, and are part of the Republic of Ecuador ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

, and

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. His cultural studies included

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, and

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

sites. His book on Glen Canyon, ''The Place No One Knew'', memorialized the canyon's appearance before its inundation by the

Lake Powell Lake Powell is an artificial reservoir on the Colorado River in Utah and Arizona, United States. It is a major vacation destination visited by approximately two million people every year. It is the second largest artificial reservoir by maximum ...

reservoir.

James Gleick James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonficti ...

’s book '' Chaos: Making a New Science'' (1987) caused Porter to reexamine his work in the context of

chaos theory Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have co ...

. They collaborated on a project published in 1990 as ''Nature's Chaos,'' which combined his photographs with a new essay by Gleick. Porter died in

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...

in 1990 and bequeathed his personal archive to the

Amon Carter Museum of American Art Amon may refer to: Mythology * Amun, an Ancient Egyptian deity, also known as Amon and Amon-Ra * Aamon, a Goetic demon People Momonym * Amon of Judah ( 664– 640 BC), king of Judah Given name * Amon G. Carter (1879–1955), American p ...

Fort Worth Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

Personal life

Eliot Porter's brother,

, was a realist painter and

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

. His brother-in-law,

Michael W. Straus Michael Wolf Straus (1897–1970) was the Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation from 1945 until 1953. Biography Straus was born in Chicago in 1897. He pursued a career as a newspaperman, serving as managing editor of the ''Chicag ...

, was a commissioner of the United States

Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

. Eliot was married to Marian Brown from 1927 until their divorce in 1934. He married Aline Kilham in 1936 and the two moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico together, living in

Tesuque, New Mexico Tesuque (Tewa: Tetsʼúgéh Ówîngeh / Tetsugé Oweengé ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States. It is part of the Santa Fe, New Mexico, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 909 at the 2 ...

from 1946.Eliot Porter: About Eliot Porter
Retrieved 2018-08-30.

References

Books

* ''In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World'', 1962. * ''The Place No One Knew, Glen Canyon on the Colorado'', 1963. * ''Summer Island: Penobscot country'', 1966. * ''Antarctica'', 1978. * ''Intimate Landscapes'', 1979. * ''Southwest'', 1985. * ''Eliot Porter'', 1987. * Birds of North America A Personal Selection", 1972 * ''Nature’s Chaos'', 1990.

External links