Eliot Porter
Biography
Eliot Porter was an American photographer known for his richly colored images of the natural world. “Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional, or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button, is a response to the exterior world,” the artist mused. “To something perceived outside himself by the person who operates the camera.” Born on December 6, 1901 in Winnetka, IL, his interest in nature was fostered by his family from a young age. He began photographing his family’s island property as a youth in Maine, before going on to study chemical engineering at Harvard University. After graduating in the mid-1930s, his brother the painter and art critic Fairfield Porter, encouraged his latent interest in photography and arranged introductions for him with both Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz. In the early 1940s, after having committed to pursue a career in photography, he began the transition from traditional black and white film to the new Kodachrome color film used by magazine photographers. Throughout the following decades, he published a number of critically acclaimed photography books, including In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World (1962), capturing the disappearing wilderness of America as well as the Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, and East Africa. The artist died on November 2, 1990 in Santa Fe, NM. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
2002
Eliot Porter: The Color of Wildness, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (solo)
1997
A Passion for Birds: Eliot Porter's Photography, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (solo)
1987
Eliot Porter, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (solo)
1986
Eliot Porter’s Southwest, Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, NM (solo)
1986
Retrospective: Eliot Porter and Beaumont Newhall, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo
1981
American Photographers and the National Parks, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
1977–1981
The Great West: Real/Ideal, (circulated by the Smithsonian Institution of Traveling Exhibition Service), University of Colorado, Boulder (and other venues - traveling exhibition)
1980
Eliot Porter: Visual Explorations, Art Center, Amarillo, TX (solo)
1979
Intimate Landscapes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1978
Mexican Church Interiors: Color Dye-Transfers by Eliot Porter and Ellen Auerbach, Sander Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1973–1975
Eliot Porter Retrospective, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque (and other venues - traveling exhibition)
1970
Eliot Porter: Nature’s Photographer, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL (solo)
1965
Color Photographs by Eliot Porter, M. H. deYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA (solo)
1963
The Photographer and the American Landscape, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1963
An Exhibition of Photographs: Eliot Porter, Art Institute of Chicago (solo)
1957
Madonnas and Marketplaces: Mexico in Color, Limelight Gallery, New York
1955–1957
This Is the American Earth, (organized by Nancy Newhall and Ansel Adams and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, LeConte Lodge, Yosemite Valley, CA (and other venues - traveling exhibition)
1952
Diogenes with a Camera, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1951
Color Photographs by Eliot Porter, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York (solo
1943
Birds in Color: Flashlight Photographs by Eliot Porter, Museum of Modern Art, New York (solo)
1942
Photographs by Eliot Porter, New York Zoological Society (solo)
1936
Exhibition of Photographs by Eliot Porter, Delphic Studios, New York (solo)
Showing the single artwork
Complete list of works
