Eliot (Furness) Porter - Photography career

Photographer, born in Winnetka, Illinois, USA. Although he had photographed natural subjects as a youth, he studied chemical engineering at Harvard and then took his MD degree at the Harvard Medical School (1929). He taught biochemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe (1929–39) and practised photography as an amateur. After the first showing of his work (1938) at An American Place, Alfred Stieglitz's gallery in New York, he was persuaded to devote himself full time to photography. He was a pioneer in the use of colour pictures and became especially noted for the almost microscopic close-ups on the details of natural objects. By 1946 he settled in Sante Fe, NM, although he was known for his landscape pictures of Maine. Among his dozen major books of photography, often with pertinent texts, are The Flow of Wildness (1968), The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972), and Birds of North America - A Personal Selection (1972). In later years he donated much of his work to the Sierra Club, which spread its conservation message with posters of his brilliant photographs, and in particular with his book In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World (1962).

Photography career

An amateur photographer since childhood, Porter earned degrees in chemical engineering and medicine, and worked as a biochemical researcher at Harvard University. In the 1940s, he began working in color with Eastman Kodak's new dye transfer process, a technique Porter would use his entire career.

Porter's reputation increased following the publication of his 1962 book, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World. Published by the Sierra Club, the book featured Porter's color nature studies of the New England woods and quotes by Henry David Thoreau.

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

James Gleick’s book, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987), caused Porter to reexamine his work in the context of chaos theory.

Porter bequeathed his personal archive to the Amon Carter Museum.