Remembering Eliot Porter
Photographer Spotlight
Eliot Porter is a source of inspiration for my personal work. Porter was born in 1901 in Chicago, and is the brother of realist artist Fairfield Porter. Originally a biochemical researcher at Harvard and earning a medical degree, Porter soon took to photography.
Working with photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams in the 1930’s, beginning his photographic career as a black and white photographer, Porter changed 
direction toward color photography, which at that time until the 1960’s was not considered a true photographic art form. Porter has inspired me primarily for his color work on tree’s. Breaking all photographic rules, and just producing photographs of tree’s with no central object of composition. I’m often criticized for this part of my body of work, and have to remind people that Eliot Porter did this in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. Porter is best known for his Sierra Club published book with Henry David Thoreau In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World. My inspiration comes from his subsequent portfolios Glen Canyon, the Adirondacks and Maine. You can definitely see his influence in my book Autumn in the Hills.
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