Spotted Towhee

An avid nature photographer, Eliot Porter helped to pioneer technologies of color printing and fought to have color photography recognized as art. He trained as a biochemical researcher, but quit his medical career to pursue photography full–time in the 1940s, publishing numerous books and portfolios in partnership with the Sierra Club. For Porter birds embodied the very best of nature’s promise, especially for a photographer. “The camera is an instrument for immediate results, ” he wrote, “and by focusing my attention on the subject it offers a way of sublimating the indefinable longing that is aroused in me by close association with birds.” In 1979 the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted an exhibition, Intimate Landscapes, to Porter’s work—the museum’s first solo show devoted to color photography.