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Email PageColor
October 12, 2006- November 18, 2006
Reception: October 12, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Eliot Porter
Hasted Hunt
529 W 20th St Eliot Porter Colorful Trees, Tennessee (1967) |  Eliot Porter Columbine Leaves, Maine, (1974) |  Eliot Porter Red Osier, Massachusetts (1957) |
Eliot Porter (1901-1990) is known as the pioneer of color photography, best celebrated for his landscapes and many publications. The color dye transfer process developed by the Eastman Kodak Co. is most highly regarded for its longevity and the intensity of the colors, the range from wild reds to intense violets. Porter’s vintage photographs are distinguished not only for their palette but also by their pictorial handsomeness, with Nature at its most abstract.
First exhibited in 1938 by Alfred Stieglitz at "An American Place" gallery, Porter had a long career spanning more than 50 years. He established his reputation most dramatically with the publication of In the Wildness Is the Preservation of the World (Sierra Club 1962). Porter published over 25 books with titles ranging from The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (1963) to Intimate Landscapes (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979) to his late collaboration with James Gleick, Nature's Chaos (Viking 1990).
The ultimate nature photographer and environmentalist, Porter photographed throughout the US and from Antarctica to Egypt to Iceland. But in his lifetime he exhibited at both the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History effectively blurring the lines between art and documentation. His archive is maintained by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
I wandered through the forests and bogs and alder thickets from dawn to dark, day after day, and summer after summer, listening and searching, tense as a taut wire for the slightest vibration and flick of movement. Unaware of time, I moved through the day without plan or design, following the trails and random leads laid out by nature. At sunrise I waded through dew-laden redtop grass that soaked my sneakers and legs, and crept through bushy thickets from which drops showered down on my face, neck, and back. Often I was drenched before the warming sun had dried the leaves. I went out in fog and rain all day and returned in the late afternoon, without a dry spot on my body, but neither cold nor uncomfortable. --Eliot Porter, Summer Island: Penobscot Country, San Francisco, 1966
At this time he began to point his camera at the environment around him. His wife, Aline Porter, suggested to him that his work and his connection to the natural world made her think of Thoreau’s writings, and he began a long project putting his images together with Thoreau’s words. In 1962 The Sierra Club published In Wildness is The Preservation of the World. The book and Porter’s vision changed our way of seeing the world forever. It was also a shocking revelation for the photography world - it was an art book of color photography.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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