Eliot Porter Trees

One of the twentieth-century’s premiere American photographers, Eliot Porter (1901-1990) grew up near Lake Michigan in Illinois and on Great Spruce Head Island in Maine, where he was fascinated by birds. In his quest to find them, he spent a lot of time looking at trees and throughout his life made many striking images of them. The exhibition includes a selection of fifteen images taken on his travels around the world, from the arid landscapes of New Mexico to the lush forests of Costa Rica. All the works in the exhibition are drawn from the museum’s rich holding of more than 295 prints by the artist.

After completing his medical training at Harvard University, Porter taught and worked in the bacteriology department while pursuing his passion for photography on weekends and vacations. Inspired by the photographs of Ansel Adams, he was awarded a solo show at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery An American Place in New York in 1938. Deciding he was a better photographer than a scientist, Porter and his wife Aline moved to northern New Mexico in 1946, maintaining a studio in Tesuque until his death.

Porter began working in color around 1940, at a time when art photographers considered it a crass, commercial process. Motivated by his desire to accurately depict birds and to represent the beauty around him, Porter forged his own path and was a pioneer in color photography. Using a masterful combination of detail, structure, and color, Porter worked for decades to capture the extraordinary diversity and wonder of this earthly place. He often used his richly-colored  images to draw attention to environmental issues, working with the Sierra Club and other organizations to advocate for the protection of natural landscapes.