20 Facts About Eliot Porter

Eliot Furness Porter was an American photographer best known for his color photographs of nature.

An amateur photographer since childhood, Eliot Porter found early inspiration photographing the birds on Maine's Great Spruce Head Island owned by his family.

Eliot Porter earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemical engineering from Harvard College and a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School, and remained at Harvard after graduation as a medical researcher.

Fairfield Eliot Porter introduced his older brother to photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz in about 1930.

Stieglitz, after seeing Eliot Porter's work, encouraged Eliot Porter to work harder.

Finally, in 1938, Stieglitz presented Eliot Porter's work, taken with a Linhof view camera, in his New York City gallery, An American Place.

Eliot Porter became interested in colour photography after a publisher rejected a proposal for a book on birds because black and white images wouldn't clearly differentiate the species.

Eliot Porter began working with a new color film, Kodachrome, introduced in 1935, but it presented considerable technical challenges, especially for capturing fast-moving birds.

For twenty years, Eliot Porter pursued a project to publish nature photographs combined with quotes from works by Henry David Thoreau.

Not until an associate introduced him to the executive director of the Sierra Club did Eliot Porter find a willing publisher.

Eliot Porter was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.

In 1979 the work of Eliot Porter was exhibited in Intimate Landscapes, the first one-person show of color photography at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Eliot Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places.

Eliot Porter published books of photographs from Glen Canyon in Utah, Maine, Baja California, Galapagos Islands, Antarctica, East Africa, and Iceland.

James Gleick's book Chaos: Making a New Science caused Eliot Porter to reexamine his work in the context of chaos theory.

Eliot Porter died in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1990 and bequeathed his personal archive to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

Eliot Porter's brother, Fairfield Porter, was a realist painter and art critic.

Eliot Porter's brother-in-law, Michael W Straus, was a commissioner of the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

Eliot Porter was married to Marian Brown from 1927 until their divorce in 1934.

Eliot Porter married Aline Kilham in 1936 and the two moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico together, living in Tesuque, New Mexico from 1946.