Eliot Porter (American, December 6, 1901–November 2, 1990) was a photographer who was known for his color photographs of nature. When he was a child, he took many photographs of real estate owned by his family in Great Spruce Head Island. Although Porter earned degrees in medicine and chemical engineering, and worked as a biological researcher at Harvard University, his true passion was photography. The start of his career in photography came when a family friend introduced Porter to Ansel Adams (American, 1902–1984) and Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946). Stieglitz showed Porter's photographs in his New York gallery in 1938. The success of this exhibit caused Porter to leave school and take on photography full-time.
Porter began working with Eastman Kodak's dye transfer process for color photographs in 1940. This changed the way that he would take photographs. In 1962, Porter published his book, In Wildness is the Preservation of the World, which increased his reputation. The book was published by the Sierra Club, and the woods and wildlife of New England served as the subject. He combined the photographs with quotes by Henry Davis Thoreau (American, 1917–1862). The book was a bestseller and yielded a number of editions. Porter then served as a Sierra Club director from 1965 to 1971. In 1971, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Throughout his career, Porter traveled and photographed locations of cultural and ecological significance. Among the locations that he photographed were Utah, California, Maine, Antarctica, Iceland, East Africa, Mexico, Egypt, China, Greece, and Czechoslovakia. Porter took a book written by James Gleick (American, b.1954) titled Chaos: Making a New Science to heart, and reexamined his own work. In 1990, Porter and Gleick collaborated on a book titled Nature's Chaos. The work combined Porter's photographs with an essay written by Gleick. When Porter died in Santa Fe, NM, in 1990, his personal archive was left to the Amon Carter Museum located in Fort Worth, TX.
