Eliot Porter's "In the Realm of Nature" book just released

[pdmoylan]

This is a collection of B&W/Color Landscape with a smattering of bird photographs, quite a few I've never seen published before. IMHO many of the reproductions are lacking sufficient resolution from his DT prints. The bird images in particular do not have the pop of those found in earlier books. Many of the "new" images are very satisfying compositionally and in color pallette, though some of the color is off too. A true pioneer , his intimate landscapes have defined several generations of emulators including myself. Imagine having no competition to speak of (Philip Hyde excepted among a few others) and no history to draw upon, having the entire surface of the earth to create new color compositions, and making a living at it. When I shoot LF I often think of his courage, vision and pathway in seeing beauty in the fine details. His images deserve better repro.

Interesting that so many of his images were not from transparencies.

PDM

[Heroique]

Thanks for the heads up, and here’s an image of the cover. I knew about Porter’s involvement w/ the Sierra Club in the 60’s, including his famous book from that time (In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World), but didn’t know he’d earned medical & chemical engineering degrees.

[Drew Wiley]

The finest reprodutions back when books like Glen Canyon and Wildness first came out were made directly from transparencies, not from DT prints, by highly skilled prepress people, well before scanning days, of course. The books were horribly expensive for the era. But my older brother idolozed Porter and we scrapped together enough money to buy
copies. I'd borrow his books and lay on the floor with a piece of white cardboard and crop
into Porter compositions and rephrased them even more tightly, which in fact became the
way I shot things much later when I acquired view equipment. I've since acquired some of
those original editions myself, but the shiny lacquer on the pages has yellowed a bit. Later
reprints were considerably inferior.