Eliot Porter – A Tribute

I mark the summer’s swift decline;
The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves.
Oh, could I catch the sounds remote?
Could I but tell to human ear
The strains which on the breezes float
And sing the requiem of the dying year!

From the Journal of
Henry David Thoreau

Of all the books I have treasured over the years one stands out with singular distinction and fond memories. It is entitled, “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World,” and it contains a wonderful selection of quotations from Thoreau’s journals, intermixed with the glorious and exquisitely detailed nature photography of that master of the art, Eliot Porter.

I first bought this book when I was in the 11th grade, the same year I was becoming deeply interested in the writings of Thoreau. It seemed to me then, and even more so today, 32 years later, that the photographs perfectly compliment the words. This book is a classic in every sense of the word, as were the other titles in that farsighted Sierra Club/Ballantine series, including “Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada,” all produced during the 60s.

It was Porter who gave me as a youth my first real glimpses of color photograhy as a fine art medium. Porter was able to combine colors in Nature in exciting and totally new ways. And, just as significantly, he was able to focus close-up on the forest floor, for example, and create a composition that told an intricate story of life and death in the natural world. New life amidst the old — this was a recurring theme in his photographs.

Also, in his larger landscapes there was always the emphasis on details. They came through clearly. Certain aspects of the scene strike the viewer as special, revealing, and in myriad ways, extraordinay, although the effect those pictures had was hard to describe in words. That is so often the way it is with great art, and the color photography of Eliot Porter belongs in the highest realms of art.

He was a man who was as deeply connected to Nature as Thoreau was in his own way. His photography has inspired me for years, just as I have come back time and again to the writings of Thoreau. This book gives me the best of both men’s work and creative genius.

The book is out of print now, and on special order by Amazon, so it is not easy to obtain in a timely fashion, but it can be ordered through the used book dealers in the Bookfinder online database (www.bookfinder.com).

Some web links for Porter’s photography follow. Some of them do not have thumbnails and so you will have to let the pages fully download to appreciate the works in all their beauty.

I know you will enjoy this sampling of Porter’s work.

http://www.afterimagegallery.com/porterinwildness.htm

http://www.afterimagegallery.com/porterglencanyon.htm

http://www.tworiversgallery.com/porter.html

The definitive work is titled “Eliot Porter” (words and text by Eliot Porter, published by the New York Graphics Society, and Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1987.

Also these books are highly recommended:

The West: Eliot Porter, MJF Books, New York, 1988 (orginally published by Little, Brown and Co.

Eliot Porter: Appalachian Wilderness — The Great Smoky Mountains, Ballantine Books, 1973.