Eliot Porter

Porter, Eliot (1901-90), American photographer. Son of a Chicago architect and brother of the painter Fairfield Porter, he trained at Harvard, first in engineering, then in medicine, in which he graduated in 1929. Throughout his life Porter used the discipline of his scientific training in his photographic work; and had a lifelong interest in the natural world which he documented in countless articles and books, many in collaboration with people like the naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch and David Brower of the Sierra Club. He took up photography as a hobby in 1930 and soon succeeded, receiving support from many including Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz. The latter showed his work at An American Place in 1938. Noted particularly for his colour work, the technical complexities of which he understood exceptionally well, Porter exhibited widely, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1979. He travelled and photographed the very ends of the earth, from Antarctica and Iceland to the Adirondacks, the Maine coast, and Baja California.

— Tim Troy

Bibliography

• Thoreau, H. D., and Porter, E., In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World (1962)

Quotes:

"Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject."

Eliot Porter
Eliot Porter
Born
Died	(1901 - 1990 (about 89 years old))
Nationality	United States
Field	photography
Famous works	Album cover art

Eliot Porter (1901 - 1990 ^{(about 89 years old)}) was an American photographer best known for his color photographs of nature.

Photography career

An amateur photographer since childhood, Porter earned degrees in chemical engineering and medicine, and worked as a biochemical researcher at Harvard University. In 1938, Alfred Stieglitz showed Porter's work in his New York City gallery. The exhibit's success prompted Porter to leave Harvard and pursue photography full-time. In the 1940s, he began working in color with Eastman Kodak's new dye transfer process, a technique Porter would use his entire career.

Porter's reputation increased following the publication of his 1962 book, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World. Published by the Sierra Club, the book featured Porter's color nature studies of the New England woods and quotes by Henry David Thoreau. A best-seller. several editions of the book have been printed.

Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places. He published books of photographs from Glen Canyon (Utah), Maine, Baja California, Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, East Africa, and Iceland. Cultural studies included Mexico, Egypt, China, and ancient Greek sites.

James Gleick’s book, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987), caused Porter to reexamine his work in the context of chaos theory. In 1990, Porter published, Nature's Chaos which combined his photographs with Gleick's writings.

Porter bequeathed his personal archive to the Amon Carter Museum. Eliot Porter's brother, Fairfield Porter, was a realist painter and art critic.

External links

• http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/porter/index.php

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