Leaf - How much beauty in decay! - Hyde Park/Sydney - Wed 27 Dec 2001 (picasa)A photo I took after work during the Christmas New Year period of 2001. Fires were burning all round Sydney and the sky was covered in smoke which resulted in a strange orange colour which can be seen in this photo. At the time I was reading much about photography and various photographers. This particular photo was inspired by
Eliot Porter.
Eliot Porter was a photographer I found early on in my photography journey and self-education. It was easy to appreciate his work (
google). He was a pioneer of colour photography (more
here) and his life work was bequested to the
Amon Carter Museum in 1990 shortly before he died (
NYT Orbituary).
Not sure how I found him, but his name seems to appear whenever landscape photographers start talking about Colour Landscape Photography when compared to Black and White Landscape Photography, particularly that of
Ansel Adams (looking at the size of the wikipedia entries, it is easy to see who was more popular both as a photographer and selection of photographic technique).
Found some interesting information about him searching the web (
google). Also, found some of his
books (along with those of Australia's own
Peter Dombrovskis) in the
National Library of Australia and would often take a look at them in NLA's reading rooms when in Canberra. Many of his photos resonated with my own vision and definitely influenced me when taking landscape (even streetscape and travel) photos, particularly in the
Snow Mountains.
At the
UNSW I found the book
Eliot Porter: photographs and text (a great article) by Eliot Porter. Learnt a lot from the text and photos selected for the book. The following is a quote (see my photo.net
page) from the book, which helped form my photographic vision ..
"It is the beauty of nature that I try to represent by photography. What this expression means to most people, I am quite sure, is such features as flowers of spring, autumn foliage, mountain landscapes, and many other similar aspects about aesthetic qualities of which no one would care to offer contradiction. That they are beautiful is indisputable, but they are not all that is beautiful about nature; in fact they are only the obvious and superficial aspects of nature - which anyone may observe with half and eye. They are the peaks and summits of nature's greatest displays. There is no doubt about their importance; they could not be dispensed with. Underlying and supporting these brillant displays are slow, quiet processes that pass almost unnoticed from season to season, unnoticed by those that think that beauty in natures is all its gaudy displays.
Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should be viewed without distinction. All her processes and evolutions are beautiful or ugly to the unbiased and indiscriminating observer. She makes no choice herself; everything that happens has equal significance. Nothing can dispensed with. This is a common mistake that many people make; they think that half of nature can be destroyed - the uncomfortable half - while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side; their idea is a paradise where nature stands still. Withering flowers blooming, death follows growth, decay follows death, and life follows decay - in a wonderful, complicated, endless web the beauties of which are manifest to a point of view attached to vulgar restricting concepts of what constitutes beauty in nature. Thoreau, who observerd all aspects of nature throughout his life, repeatedly remarked on the beauty of the unaccepted. 'How much beauty in decay!' he exclaimed on examining a worm-eaten leaf. To him the sere, brown leaves of winter were as beautiful as the fresh green of spring. This was a principle that has remained important for me throughout my career."
A fairly long quote, but for me was definitely something worth remembering.
This
link provides a great summary of the life and works of Eliot Porter. I like the ending quote ..
The final paragraphs on the art of photography touch on his views to color, composition and emotional content of his images: "Sensitivity cannot be faked by trickor devise; it has no substitute, and any attempt to replace it with mechancial contrivances is certain to be apparent to the more discerning critics. Not all photographs have to be inspired to be worth making, but the best, rare photographs are the result of a a force at least very close to inspiration. Formulized work becomes impersonal, an all the individuality of authorship tends to disappear. It unquestionably has its uses, but it is not art."
The book itself echoes Porter's ability to redact nature's chaos into a single harmonious image, and is a well-deserved tribute to this pioneer of color nature photography.The following was one of my favourite Eliot Porter photos:
Pool in a Brook, Brook Pond/New Hampshire by Eliot Porter - 04 Oct 1953 (Carter Museum)I recently thought of Eliot Porter and the above photo, when I took the following photo during the
2010 Ord River Marathon:
Ord River Reflections - 2010 Ord River Marathon - Sun 14 Jun 2010
