Eliot Porter: Intimate Landscapes

I have long been inspired by the work of Eliot Porter and was required to photograph in his style for L2 Landscape and researched him towards the end of L2 PWDP and wrote up the research in my blog.  As a result I bought a copy of his Intimate Landscapes, second hand as cost precluded a new copy.  Intimate Landscapes is the catalogue for the 1979 exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In his forward to the book Philippe de Montebello (director of MOMA) says that Intimate Landscapes was the first one man exhibition of colour photographs ever presented at MOMA.  He continues by writing that Porter's first work exhibited at MOMA in 1949 when Georgia O'Keefe presented a collection of images from the estate of Alfred Stieglitz, which he, himself, had assembled.  De Montebello goes on to say that all of the images in the exhibition reflect Porter's high standards of excellence.  (De Montebello, 1979, P9)

In his preface Eliot Porter suggests that abstract art refers to work inspired by the imagination of the artist but this is more difficultto sustain in photography.  An optical image, he says, is always an abstraction from the natural world.  When the selected image is self-explanatory and does not imply more that what lies within its area it is usually referred to as abstract, that is, independent of its surroundings. eg a pattern of rock, or lichens, or grasses.  He stresses that he does not photograph for ulterior purposes, only for the thing itself with no thought as to how it might be used.  The natural world as a subject had always appealed to him, especially grasses and sedges. (Porter, 1979, P11)

In the afterword to the book, Weston J. Naef, curator, writes that Porter's photographs satisfy comments made by both Emile Zola: "A work of art is a detail of nature seen through a temperament" and Paul Klee who said that "The purpose of art is to make visible the invisible".  He suggests that choices made by the photographer: camera, light, point of view, printing paper or psychological atmosphere, are just as important as the subject matter itself.  Naef argues that a photograph is a magical illusion of reality on a flimsy piece of paper whose power to affect the viewer emotionally springs from fundamental decisions on the part of the photographer.  He feels that Porter's strongest compositions have the look of carefully planned randomness.  He continues that the photographs are based on an act of contemplation and mood sustained by the precise control of colour relationships.  He also feels that to appreciate Porter's photographs close attention should be paid to the writings of Henry David Thoreau.  He was a 20th century Thoreauvian whose inspiration came from a series of camping trips in the Canadian Rockies and his time spent as a boy on Great Spruce Head, an island owned by his family.

Naef says that, initially, Eliot Porter's approach had more in common with the metod of the scientist than that of the aesthete, or of the meditative observer he later became.  He writes that Porter's early inspiration came from Ansel Adams and Alfred STieglitz and his work was first exhibitied by Stieglitz in An Ameican Place in December 1938.  Partly as a result of this exhibition Porter gave up his teaching career for photography and began working exclusively in colour.  Porter went on to reread Thoreau after his wife pointed out the similarity between his work and Thoreau's writings.  He then began using the writings as direct inspiration for photographs; for instance plate 11 in the book Aspen, Yellow Leaves and Asters is based on Thoreau's journal entry for October 1852.  The work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially his1835  essay Nature also became an inspiration.  Perhaps Porter's work that is most linked with Thoreau is In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World, published by the Sierra Club.

Despite stating that he had no ulterior motive for his photography, with the publication of  The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado in 1963, he came to be considered exclusively as a propagandist for the conservation movement.

One aspect of Porter's work, Naef writes, is a tendency to degeographise the image.  In Intimate Landscapes the photographs could be of anywhere rather than attached to any specific place. (Naef, 1979, PP 126-134)

Intimate Landscapes is a large format book comprising the 55 images from the exhibition.  Each photograph fills one page with the caption on the preceding one.  The caption includes the day of capture.  All the photographs are beautifully printed on quality satin paper.  Particular favourites include Plate 1, Foxtail Grass, Lake City, Colorado, August 1957, where white flowers peep out from between the grass stems.  There is very slight movement blur in the grasses which give it life.  The photograph was taken looking staright down as was Plate 2, Maple Leaves and Pine Needles, Tamworth, New Hampshire.  October 3, 1956.  I like the attractive use of colour in Plate 12, Trunks of Maple and Birch with Oak Leaves, Passaconaway Road, New Hampshire.  October 7, 1956 and also in Plate 22, Pool in a Brook, Near Whiteface, New Hampshire.  October 1953 and, particularly, Plate 48, Puffer Pond Brook, Warren County, Adirondack Park, New York.  May 23, 1964.

De Montebello (1979) Intimate Landscapes, New York: MOMA

Porter, E. (1979) Intimate Landscapes, New York: MOMA

Naef, W.J. (1979) Intimate Landscapes, New York: MOMA