Known for his exquisite images of birds and landscape, Eliot Porter (American, 1901–1990) was a pioneer in the use of color photography. His work also became a powerful visual argument for environmental conservation. Trained as a medical doctor and possessing a scientist's gift for close observation, Porter explored new ways of depicting nature, building blinds in trees so he could study his avian subjects at closer vantage, and producing landscape images that capture both pristine forest and ragged river canyons with equal force and brilliance. Initially encouraged by the groundbreaking photographers Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, Porter went on to produce a body of work all his own. His 1962 Sierra Club book In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, with its images grouped by season and accompanied by quotations from Henry David Thoreau, transformed the concept of nature photography books. Ultimately, Porter's photographs came to the attention of Congress and led to the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, the foundational law in wilderness management today. Eliot Porter: In the Realm of Nature contains 110 images from the collections of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser; the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and of the J. Paul Getty Museum, along with an essay by Paul Martineau that discusses Porter's life and the innovations he brought to the practice of photography.
Eliot Porter has photographed the American West throughout his long and illustrious career, finding in this region one of the purest expressions of our natural environment--its fragile balance as well as its power and majesty. Although his classic Sierra Club publications, among them books on Glen Canyon, Summer Island in Maine, and Baja California, have enhanced the appreciation of this vast region for generations of Americans, until now no single book has conveyed the depth and stirring scope of his vision. For this inspirational portfolio, New York Graphic Society Books has drawn extensively on the artist's personal archive (all but a handful of images have never been published before) to create the quintessential view of Eliot Porter's West. Indeed, this volume encompasses the entire region, from the area around Porter's home in Santa Fe to the precipice of Big Sur, from the canyonlands and the saguaro deserts to the peak of Mount Rainier. Whether photographing a lovely detail of wildflowers on a mountainside or the "silver ribbon" of the Colorado River as it courses through the breathtaking panorama of the Grand Canyon, Porter never fails to communicate his passion for the natural world via his impeccable eye for color and form.
Intimate Landscapes, an exhibition of fifty-five color photographs by Eliot Porter, is the first one-man exhibition of color photographs ever presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Works by Eliot Porter entered the Museum's collection as far back as 1949, when Georgia O'Keeffe presented from the Estate of Alfred Stieglitz an important collection of photographs assembled by Stieglitz himself. This collection included three early black and white prints by Eliot Porter, one of which is reproduced in this catalogue. All the photographs in the present exhibition brilliantly reflect the standards of excellence that are Eliot Porter's greatest contribution to the field of color photography. Upon seeing these photographs, the viewer is immediately struck by the artist's distinctly individual and intimate interpretation of the natural world.
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