Eliot Porter
American, 1901 - 1990
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1864 - 1901
BiographyWildlife photographer; writer; conservationist; began photographing landscapes and birds (his favorite subjects) in childhood; after earning chemical-engineering and medical degrees at Harvard University, taught biochemistry at Harvard and at Radcliffe College from 1929 to 1939, when, with encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange, he became full-time freelance photographer; pioneered use of color photography in 1940s; with unerring sense of composition, often concentrated on the microcosmic--a leaf, rock textures, the details of running water--to convey the grandeur of nature; published some dozen books of his photographs and texts, including Summer Island--Penobscot Country (1966), Baja California--The Geography of Hope (1967), The Flow of Wildness (1968), The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972), Antarctica (1973), and his masterpiece, Birds of North America--A Personal Selection (1972); donated much of his work to Sierra Club, which reproduced his crisp and dramatic photos as posters; was credited with bringing Sierra Club and its conservationist message to international attention with his book In Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World (1962), with text from writings of Henry David Thoreau; died in Santa Fe, New Mexico.