PORTER, ELIOT (FURNESS)

born Dec. 6, 1901, Winnetka, Ill., U.S. died Nov. 2, 1990, Santa Fe, N.M. American photographer noted for his colour images of birds and landscapes. Porter trained as an engineer at Harvard University (B.S., 1924) and as a physician at the Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1929), but after teaching biochemistry at Harvard from 1929 to 1939, he took up photography full-time. His early bird photographs were in black-and-white, but in the early 1940s he began using the new colour film Kodachrome. Gradually his colour photography shifted from the portrayal of birds to natural landscapes, which were first presented in 1962 in an exhibition and book entitled In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, the latter published by the Sierra Club. This first book was followed by many other collections of nature photographs, including those in The Place No One Knew (1963), Baja California (1967), Galapagos (1968), Appalachian Wilderness (1970), and The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972). Many of his finest photographs of birds were collected in Birds of North America (1972).