Eliot Porter
The Early Years
A Rapport with Nature
June 27th - August 22nd
My first groping efforts as a photographer were exclusively of birds. After many years my interest in photography became more general, only to return to birds as my skill improved and as advances were made in photographic technology. It was not long before I realized that the criteria of excellence applied by ornithologists in this field were considerably below the high professional standards required of photographers in other fields. To raise the standards of bird photography called for the adoption of innovations and techniques developed for other purposes, notably the use of flash lamps synchronized with a high-speed shutter. This technological improvement, however necessary, was far from sufficient in itself. What was needed was essentially to raise bird photography above the level of reportage, to transform it into art. With these concepts in mind, I went to work as a bird photographer.
Eliot Porter
Eliot Porter, Birds of North America, A Personal Selection
E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1972
Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd is pleased to present a very special collection of Eliot Porter’s vintage prints. This collection covers his early work in black & white, his first efforts in color (1941) using the wash-off relief process, the precursor to dye-transfer, and the dye-transfer process (from the late 1940s on), the process that Eliot used and refined for the rest of his life. This exhibition features vintage prints, in both black & white and in color, made by Eliot Porter. Some of the rare mages were included in Porter’s 1939 exhibition at Alfred Steiglitz’s gallery, An American Place.
Porter’s involvement in photography began with his interest in birds at the early age of 10, in 1911, when his father gave him a box camera (also on display at the studio). These first endeavors were in black & white. He tells of his transition from black & white to color…
… In 1941 I took a portfolio to a Boston publisher, where an editor for whom birds were an avocation looked at them all, made encouraging comments, and then pronounced his edict on my work. “We cannot publish these,” “because they are in black & white, and the birds cannot be unequivocally identified.” I must have shown my disappointment, for he went on to suggest that he could publish my photographs if they were in color. I am sure he had no conception of the problems entailed in making color photographs of birds in 1941. Nevertheless, I took his remark as a sort of promise, and went to Eastman Kodak Company for advice on using synchronized flash along with Kodachrome film, which had recently appeared on the market.
That spring, I began photographing birds in color. A Guggenheim Fellowship for the project followed, and after I had learned to make color prints using the wash-off relief process, the precursor of dye-transfer prints, I returned to Boston with a portfolio of color prints in which I took inordinate pride. I was admitted to the same editor’s office, and again he looked at the collection, making comments that were still more enthusiastic than before. But he said nothing about publishing them, until in an agony of suspense I asked a direct question. In reply he said, “We can’t publish these, it would cost far too much.”
Eliot Porter, April, 1972
Eliot Porter , Birds of North America, A Personal Selection
E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1972
His later transition in the mid-50s to the work he has come to be identified with, the intimate details of nature, took place while he was out in the field photographing birds.
The nest finder must go out into the fields and woods with his wits sharpened to a razor’s edge, with all his senses tuned to their highest pitch, and with his mind free of the distractions and preoccupations that burden the society he has temporarily left behind. His consciousness must be focused on the world outside himself, in which he must move without self-awareness. If he succeeds in attaining this rapport with nature, all creatures, as Thoreau said, will rush to make their report to him. He will learn who his companions are, where they are, and what they are about. All their activities will be as shouted declarations, and no secrets will be kept from him.
I wandered through the forests and bogs and alder thickets from dawn to dark, day after day, and summer after summer, listening and searching, tense as a taut wire for the slightest vibration and flick of movement. Unaware of time, I moved through the day without plan or design, following the trails and random leads laid out by nature.
At sunrise I waded through dew-laden redtop grass that soaked my sneakers and legs, and crept through bushy thickets from which drops showered down on my face, neck, and back. Often I was drenched before the warming sun had dried the leaves. I went out in fog and rain all day and returned in the late afternoon, without a dry spot on my body, but neither cold nor uncomfortable.
Eliot Porter
Summer Island: Penobscot Country
The Sierra Club, San Francisco, 1966
At this time he began to point his camera at the environment around him. His wife, Aline Porter, suggested to him that his work and his connection to the natural world reminded her of Thoreau’s writings, and he began a long project of putting his images together with Thoreau’s words. In 1962, the Sierra Club published In Wildness Is The Preservation of the World. The book and Porter’s vision changed our way of seeing the world forever. It was also a shocking revelation for the photography world – it was an art book of color photography. To celebrate the publishing of In Wildness, Eliot worked with the Sierra Club to produce a portfolio of 12 original prints, entitled The Season, which will also be on display.
We can examine Eliot Porter’s work and life and realize that Porter, with quiet determination and sometimes as the lone voice, represents the long struggle for color photography to be recognized and accepted as an art form. While he produced full bodies of work in both black & white and color until the late 1950s, he began to see the world more in color than in black & white. His commitment to color was furthered by his relationship with his brother, the painter and art critic, Fairfield Porter, and his wife, Aline, also a painter. They both saw the world around them in color.
While color is now accepted and embraced in contemporary art, it is hard for us to realize how resistant and scornful the art world was to color photography until the early 1980s. Color was criticized for being too literal and therefore limiting in its creative potential to be as interpretive and emotional as a black & white print. Of course, this attitude has not prevailed, and we have Eliot Porter, who never gave in to that criticism but continued, through consistency and pure determination, to work in color, no matter what the criticism.