Eliot Porter, The Place No One Knew

[Willie]

Glen Canyon.

Before the dam and it was flooded to create Lake Powell.

Porters images are excellent. Most locations have not been seen again above water since the lake filled.
With the drought conditions - are any of the locations now out of the water? Or maybe so little water one can get to them to photograph?

[Drew Wiley]

Our family didn't have a lot of money, and my older brother was only the 8th person in history to survive open heart surgery, and was hospitalized for an entire year afterwards. Now they do that kind of thing on almost an assembly line basis, and people are out in few days. But a few years later he wanted to become a pro photographer and coveted a copy of the newly released Glen Canyon book. It think it was around $75 then, and set a new standard in the quality of the reproductions. The pages were even varnished. I don't know who inherited it after he passed away. But I eventually acquired a copy of my own.

Last week, the color movie pictures David Brower took on that same trip were shown on a PBS documentary about it. Remarkable as a reminder of what was lost. A friend of mine ran into David uphill from here and photographed him and his wife, shortly before he passed away a few years ago. Only once has Lake Powell been low enough to revisit places like Cathedral in the Desert. Usually it is kept relatively full. But Lake Mead downriver takes the hit instead, and now is at an all time low. Just maybe Las Vegas could learn to live without 90 golf courses and giant fountains? Soon they won't have a choice!

One of the people who repeatedly floated down through Glenn Canyon and loudly protested its damming was Sen Barry Goldwater from Arizona, better known for his failed Presidential run. Some of his black and white shots of it, well before Porter, were published in early issues of Arizona Highways and Desert Magazine. But even he was pressured into giving permission for the dam, then later deeply regretted it.

I'm hoping to still have opportunity to backpack into some of the side canyons once again, but drought years are not a good idea, and I'm not getting any younger. You have to carry enough water not only to get to a reputable spring, but to get you back just in case it has dried up. The last canyon trek I did a number of years ago, I was actually carrying 8x10 format - quite a load.

There's an excellent interview with Jim Bones on the web, who did most of Porter's dye transfer printing. It's filmed back in Porter's own digs in New Mexico, where the whole darkroom with its supplies has been preserved for posterity. Jim goes through a demonstration of dye transfer printing technique using Porter's own vintage equipment. The book itself was made directly from the original chromes by highly skilled offset technicians, not from prints. That was the case with most of Porter's coffee table books. With a much later classic book, Intimate Landscapes, the color separations were made from actual DT prints instead.

[scheinfluger_77]

It was quite a place. We had two family boating vacations there in 1965 & ‘67. All that visible sandstone with an infant lake was something to see. In 1967 we went in June and the lake had so much water coming into it, it was rising about 20” each night we camped.

[rdenney]

One of my favorite photo books that I bought when Porter couldn’t get respect, and therefore paid pennies for it, remaindered at a bookstore.

Later, I bought the commemorative edition that came out in 2000–also cheap—mostly because we have to buy books like this if we want to see books like this.

But my favorite Porter book is In Wildness..., which demonstrates that clarity doesn’t mean images can’t be busy with detail.

Rick “longtime Eliot Porter fan” Denney

[Drew Wiley]

In Wildness put him on the map with the general public, though he had already made his mark with Stieglitz. Another "keeper" book on my shelves, the original version with glossy pages. Current outdoor photographers would do well to study his many images where hue relationships exist mainly on the level of nuanced neutrals, especially in his winter scenes. To be effective, color does not always need to be loud. And yes, look long enough and you'll discover a certain sophistication to how he handles details, which might not instantly be apparent, but which set him apart from the numerous clone wannabees. A mere pattern or tapesty doesn't quite cut it.

[Vaughn]

Concerning the two lakes (Mead and Powell)...in a long-term drought situation, if might pay to drain one of the lakes and keep one near capacity. Much less water loss due to evaporation -- half the surface area.

[pdmoylan]

Some years ago, I found a copy of his Glen Canyon book free from a library who was "cleaning out" their stacks for newer editions. It had a stamp inside, "free, not for resale". So goes the value of grand photo books in an instagram era. Some of those images are among his best (though I have a general preference for his Adirondacks, Iceland and Antarctica books). His work has unfortunately become completely undervalued compared to A. Adams and lost among the hoards of his "digital" successors. He was a pioneer on so many fronts, and his aesthetic style/approach and choice of subject matter were unique (perhaps Philip Hyde should be included as pioneers during this time).

His development of DT prints was cutting edge, and IMHO, and notwithstanding the BIF afficianados who have eclipsed his work since with use of vast technological innovations and digital imaging, I find many of his images of birds in flight superior as art work. Imagine using 4x5 Kodachrome film (ASA 10?) and strobes to take images of birds moving to and from the nest. To the best of my knowledge, noone else has attempted this using the same film, cameras and strobe techniques (Hosking used Hasselblads for nesting birds, but most were B&W). Today these types of images are frowned upon due to the loss of 68% of wild creatures worldwide in 50 years (an astonishing and dreadful statistic, equally so for homo sapiens) and a need to further reduce stress on breeding birds with perhaps a 40-50% reduction in their numbers during same period. It seems Great Salt Lake is close to having its own catastrophe and with it loss of a unique habitat and a huge diversity of wildlife.

But, if it wasn't for the support of Adams and Porter by the Sierra Club, it is not clear to me what prominence they would have today. Likewise, the aesthetic that the Sierra Club was founded upon has been garbled by immediate natural catastrophes: historic fires and drought, and massive floods in some areas. The photographers and those organizations (I include Audubon and Wilderness Society among them) raised the consciousness of the middle and upper classes during periods when there was a perception of greater financial stability and opportunity in the US. We can thank Teddy for his foresight in setting aside natural lands, whose birthday I share.

The feud over Colorado River and tributary water rights began as early as 1899 with JW Powell's raising awareness and will continue until there is no water left. I fear, if current trends continue unabated for years, that the Western states will evolve into something similar to the Namibian Coast, with massive sand dunes, little vegetation, and mostly uninhabitable.

Adams is best known for his California and New Mexico subject matter, while Porter covered a greater range of locations including non-US (Iceland, China, Galapagos, Greece). Many of his images show incredible detail with colors less "glamorous" and more contrasty than was realized with successive Ektachrome and Fuji films, processing, and print output. Though protege careers were relatively short lived, many cloned Porter's style and techniques and survived: Muench, Clifton, Clay, Dykinga, Gnass, etc...

I understand that Barry Goldwater, (politician cum 4x5 shooter) initially tried to halt the Glen Canyon dam, capitulated, and regretted this later decision the rest of his life.

If I could add access to Glen Canyon for imaging to my bucket list, it would go right to the top.

[Thad Gerheim]

"The feud over Colorado River and tributary water rights began as early as 1899 with JW Powell's raising awareness and will continue until there is no water left. I fear, if current trends continue unabated for years, that the Western states will evolve into something similar to the Namibian Coast, with massive sand dunes, little vegetation, and mostly uninhabitable."

"Beyond the One Hundredth Meridian" by Wallace Stegner is a good book about water in the west and how JW Powell understood the problems in not protecting watersheds. Unfortunately, manifest destiny won out and still prevails today. What has happened with the Escalante national monument in the last few years is one example.

Tad Nichols did a good book of black and white photos of Glen Canyon- "Images of a Lost World". I think him an Eliot Porter were friends and did some river trips together.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, DT printers can be a catty lot, and some have sneered at Porter's own abilities as a printer. He mostly used an assistant, and much of his equipment was at first home-made. Porter got into DT printing hoping to make accurate color images of birds, his primary subject matter at first. After all, DT was the up and coming "easy" way to do color, in contrast to carbro printing. My modest experiments involve a modern tweak on the previous wash-off relief method. Philip Hyde was just too poor to have serious printing gear, and his DT prints were quite unsharp. Cole Weston's were commercially printed. But I was never a competitor in that field, so some of that previous generation of dye printers were quite kind and encouraging to me when I showed up in the same neighborhood with Ciba prints.

But alas, water wars are only going to get worse. B&W footage of my own father supervising a major section of the Central Valley Project showed up in a recent PBS documentary on the central Calif water wars (distinct from the earlier Owens Valley war). It was only later in life, when he learned that most of that water ended up being delivered free to giant corporate farms owned by oil companies, and not family farms, that he regretted it all. Some of that imbalance has been rectified; but between mindless urban sprawl out onto farmland and now thousands of years worth of fossil water being sucked out of the ground, something has to give. More dams won't help a bit as snowpack itself dramatically diminishes - more lakes will just equate to evaporation pits and empty mud holes. The classic book Cadillac Desert expressed it well, the West has developed a genius for wasting water. I'm just glad to have lived and photographed while so much was still left, semi-intact ecologically in the mountains at least. It's changing fast.

[pdmoylan]

Really interesting insight and personal history Drew. Thanks for sharing it. How difficult for your father to have realized the result of his efforts were inequitable.

On the DT front, I know little, but I assumed that the difficulty in printing was more the result of challenges with the taking film (and quality of lenses) itself not the printing process. Kodachrome from its outset was high contrast (what was the DR rating for KII I wonder?)) and so behaves better in lower light - and I think many of Porter's (and Philip Hyde's) best images are where contrast does not overwhelm the image, i.e. there is a nice range of tones, but there are certainly exceptions. But isn't there a "translation" required with DT to shift the Kodachrome (or Ektachrome) color cast to something a bit more "accurate" (or preferable), reducing contrast with masking? Just curious. Having worked Ciba prints, I can say that the paper and process was more suitable for reds, yellows, and warm colors generally, with greens in particular being a bit off. So you sought internegs for high contrast images, or where the predominant colors were mostly greens or blues.

I wonder if some of Porter's best images could be drum scanned, and printed using Fuji Archival or Durst Lambda as a compare to his DT prints. The objective, to further reduce contrast and improve tonal range and slightly adjust color where appropriate. A Porter retrospective using new printing techniques, hmm.

As you suggest, we have lived during the convergence of matured social concern for the preservation of the natural world with the emergence of high quality fine art photography. I feel privileged to have participated. (I also feel privileged to live in the mid-atlantic states where water, at least, is not an issue).

As the Colorado River watersheds dry up and assuming the western fires continue to rage annually, populations will migrate elsewhere (the move out of CA and AZ has already begun - NV is next I expect). The real danger (and the statistics bear this out so far), is the continuing increase in world population by 300% every 75 years. This is untenable and I believe a contributing factor to current social anxiety (uncertainty of individual survival in the context of inadequate resources to support growing populations).Wars, famines, diseases contributed to moderating that growth in the past. We have become too complacent with our success perhaps in extending, and the procreation of life. Some districts in India have recently created new ground rules which penalize those who have more than 2 children. They recognize that resources will be outstripped quickly with current growth rates. Yet China has eliminated its former limitations which makes one wonder why (I think the answer may be quite obvious with its expanding "global reach").

Otherwise, space, here we come!! ... and finding a new home or two. To think that Gene Roddenberry's vision may not have been pure fantasy.

[Drew Wiley]

DT was the most malleable printing process ever invented, so could begin with all kinds of originals : color neg, color transparency of any type, or tricolor in-camera separations onto black and white film. The most common method was starting from a positive chrome and, via quite a bit of intermediate masking, making tricolor separations from those. Up to 15 sheets of film were sometimes involved, plus the matrix printing film itself. DT masking protocols are quite different than for Ciba printing; and both are different from color neg film supplemental masking when it is needed, although the same kinds of punch and register gear can be used for all of them.

Some of Porter's original chromes have been drum scanned and reprinted via inkjet for sake of modern redux exhibitions. Inkjet doesn't have the same richness, hue purity, or transparency as actual dyes. But it's risky to subject the old remaining original DT prints to a lot of harsh display illumination, so certain compromises have been made. It probably would have been too expensive to have Porter's work remastered on actual dye transfer again by the only commercial lab still specializing in that service, which is in Germany and uses their own proprietary materials. But a number of individuals still do personal DT printing using remaining Kodak and Efke materials.

I personally hate it when classic old color work is re-issued in either a different color medium or very different size. These new virtual digitally projected exhibitions of old Masters work, Van Gogh, etc. make me want to throw up. A friend described one of those to me earlier this week, and himself attended only because someone else had bought him a ticket. It's like paying to watch Elvis impersonators.

Lightjet, Lambda, and Chromira laser printers expose regular Fuji and Kodak RA4 papers after scanning the original and then software manipulations. A highly skilled operator can achieve results analogous to Ciba in look, but with better color control, but certainly not in my opinion as well as a highly skilled Ciba printer could have done directly. It was the idiosyncrasies of the Ciba medium which often made it special. Fujiflex Supergloss is easier to handle and somewhat more affordable than Ciba was, and certainly keeps better before exposure. I need to order another big roll of that.

There were some tricks to getting the greens of Ciba spot on; but I figured that out long ago. With color neg printing, the problem is with the film itself not well differentiating the warm tones - traditional CN films are engineered to dump all of that into "pleasing skintones". Ektar has solved that problem, but has trouble differentiating blue and cyan under certain circumstances.

I won't go into the social issues. But I'm not thrilled about moving to space. We've already darn near wrecked one planet. Now that small amounts of water have been found on the moon as well as on Mars, we'll probably dry them up a thousand times faster if stations are ever planted there, and then go to war over the last few drops. I rooted for the Martians in "Mars Attacks".

[j.e.simmons]

Akk-Akk.

[Mark Sampson]

Long ago I found a first edition of "The Place No One Knew". it was out of print at the time and I paid a lot for it. Revisiting it recently, I'd like to see the 2000 reissue. Color lithography has come a long way since the 1960s, and the repros in my 1st edition are a little murky.
I did have the pleasure of seeing a number of Porter originals at the MPW some years back., and they still rank as the most beautiful color photographs that I've ever seen.

[Willie]

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2021/07/22/lake-powell-level-about/

This article has information on the lake level. Does not look good.

If the level keeps dropping maybe some will be able to photograph a few locations and show the reality now compared to then?

http://archive.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/travel/articles/0724azhkayak0724.html

Then this article from 2005. The level has dropped 145 vertical feet since 1999, when the lake was full.

Maybe some of Porter and others locations will be seen again, including the bathtub ring and all the junk lost overboard from the boaters?

[Drew Wiley]

Mark - all the re-issues are conspicuously inferior to the printing quality of the original edition. It would be prohibitively expensive to make books like that again. An enormous amount of hand tuning of the original plates was involved using highly skilled craftsmen of a level of skill and experience that might not even exist anymore. I've never seen any kind of color per se photo books of the same quality as Porter's early series. But the one notable problem with the originals is that the varnish on the pages has tended to yellow over time.

As I recall, the re-issue of the hardback version simply used the original plates again. But these being somewhat worn, the end result was relatively disappointing. The smaller less expensive paperback versions of Porter's work and others of that same genre were all conspicuously inferior, but still worth having if one couldn't afford the big fancy ones. High quality book papers themselves have gotten so expensive in recent years that it's a game-changer problem itself.

[SergeyT]

I can't help but wonder why most if not all the talks about photography eventually come down to "how the picture was made" instead of, for example , "why the photograph shows what it shows" or "what the photographer tries to say to the viewer". Something tells me that Mr.Porter was not making his pictures to demonstrate superiority of equipment, development and printing methods that he used. Or did he ?

[Drew Wiley]

Porter was independently wealthy. He had nothing to prove in that respect. Many of his Maine pictures, for example, were taken on the substantial family estate. He became quite a bird watcher, and then acquired machinist skills during the War, which helped him make his own equipment. He later replaced much of his own equipment with better gear from Condit. He is purported to have used a variety of cameras, mainly of 4X5 and 6X6 category; but expense was not an issue for him. After the war, he was pretty much free to do as he pleased. Thoreau was an immense influence on his outlook upon nature.

Esthetically, the very manner of presentation of color, and how it integrated the subtleties of a rightly complex holistic natural world in the Thoreauvian meaning, was well served by the specific qualities of dye transfer printing. This is especially apparent in his first book, In Wildness, as well as in his last great book, Intimate Landscapes. It allowed for a fine-tuning of neutrals in particular, in relation to clean saturated hues, which is quite difficult in simpler processes. I already mentioned that he got into DT printing specifically to render bird colors accurately, which included softer hues. Having mastered that as well as could be expected back then, he acquired a very versatile palette for landscape work. So yes, he simply had to become a highly skilled technician to get his point across. But once he got traction with print collectors per se, much of his printing was done by even more skilled assistants like Jim Bones, or was even farmed out to commercial dye transfer labs when higher volumes of specific images were needed.

DT is a lot of work and slows one down, and uniquely allows one to apply or re-apply subtle controls clear throughout the entire process. It was the ideal match for Porter; otherwise, he wouldn't be Eliot Porter as we know him. Thank goodness shortcuts like inkjet printing weren't available yet. Something would be missing. In fact, the best inkjet printers I have ever met were DT printers first. Dyes particularly favor control of deep tones, while inkjet is more friendly to highlight tonality. Overall neutrality and hue cleanliness is best achieved with dye transfer. But there are many renditions of it, with many possible dye combinations. During its heyday, at least five commercial manufacturers of supplies were extant. It could easily be revived if enough people were interested and had the money to spend on custom coating runs. But alas, this is the era of instant everything. I understand; even retired, I can't find an uninterrupted block of time sufficient to explore this particular process in depth. But I put plenty of time and contemplation into my other forms of darkroom color printing, so don't feel too bad.

[pdmoylan]

If I can append Drew's history of Porter. He began his career as a physician, taught at Harvard, and became smitten with the study and eventually the photography of birds (my photography began with birds as well, coincidentally, having studied birds independently in graduate school). At the time I think he saw an opportunity to take the then emerging color films and his passion for birds and merge them into beautiful images. I can understand this passion for birds and their colors as my first published photo was a full page in Audubon magazine in 1986 of a rare Henslow's Sparrow singing on territory. It was taken with a 700mm f5 Celestron mirror lens which I purchased from a famous Astrophysicist, Martin Schwartzchild, who was at the prestigious Princeton Institute of Advanced Study. Martin and his wife Barbara both had a passion for bird photography and a core respect for Porter, and would go on sojourns to the Arctic, Iceland and US locations to photograph birds. We would get together often to share images we had taken during our various trips.

But birds are too difficult to photograph at the nest and impossible otherwise with a view camera. Porter was highly criticized for having cut branches with nests in them to lower the nest to the ground so he could set up his camera and strobes. I think this criticism swayed him to somewhat reduce his bird photography efforts thereafter. My impression is that Porter chose to expand to the landscape to maintain the same visual aesthetic he had begun with birds.

Many of his early landscapes were from the Maine island his family owned, so perhaps his explorations of that pristine landscape influenced his non-bird photo efforts.

It seems incongruous to me that with our ever improving technology and printing techniques, we are unable to produce quality prints which match the DT output. I myself was satisfied with Cibas for some things and Lambdas for most of my LF prints. I never had a chance to have a DT print made of one of my own. As Drew mentions, it would be a wish to be able to produce prints of the same quality as Porter's DT prints from years ago. Perhaps someday.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, it really depends how far you wish to fine-tune any print medium. I've proven to myself and at least certain skeptics who have actually seen my work, that even RA4 chromogenic prints can be coaxed into a qualitative realm way beyond the stereotypes of them. And as far a Ciba went, as I told Ctein, who was accustomed to the control inherent to DT, you need to dance with Ciba instead, and let it lead. It's the very limitations and idiosyncrasies of specific media which contribute to their magic. But all kinds of other factors are involved : practicality, expense, image permanence, processing safety, equipment reliability, ease of acquiring supplies, etc. It's all relevant. Pick a method and get good at it.

[Willie]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/29/lake-powell-arizona-utah-climate-crisis

The short video of weather related disasters in the article is worth watching.

Looks as if lower lake levels are opening up some areas that have groups lobbying for permanently lower levels.

Those in the area relying on Tourism and lake boat rentals are really hurting. The tourism economy of the entire area is taking a hit. Two photographers I know were on a trip to the Southwest and cancelled - not due to drought but the flooding and damage in the area this past week.

Below is a short section from the article.

Before it was buried by Lake Powell, the sprawling region of slickrock canyons called Glen Canyon was described by environmentalist and author Ed Abbey as the “living heart” of the Colorado River. And now that environmental groups, scientists, and cartographers have access to document the restored ecology in hundreds of side canyons, they say it’s time for the park officials to no longer focus solely on maintaining water-based recreation at Lake Powell.

“We are not anti houseboat, we are just pro-Glen Canyon,” says Eric Balken, executive director of the not for profit Glen Canyon Institute based in Salt Lake City. “We want the ecological values of Glen Canyon to be part of the discussion about how to move forward during climate change.”

Balken says there is huge potential for other recreational opportunities in the side canyons that emerge out of Lake Powell. And the Page boating industry agrees that the newly accessible scenic areas in Glen Canyon are a big draw for tourists. “My customers say they have never seen so many beautiful places to park a houseboat,” says West. “The lower the lake gets the better it becomes for camping.”

[Alan Klein]

Here's a link to Eliot Porter's pictures.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=dSY2xAos&id=DA8629E420C030F8501E84FABDB291A0398E8FB6&thid=OIP.dSY2xAosLVpA05j0j6y9RQHaJ2&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.752636c40a2c2d5a40d398f48facbd45%3frik%3dto%252bOOaCRsr36hA%26riu%3dhttp%253a%252f%252f1.bp.blogspot.com%252f-l7iek3JxgXI%252fUcArParbd_I%252fAAAAAAAAGgI%252fK9krROgCg3M%252fs1600%252fFile7590.jpg%26ehk%3dJtUmn1oRusq4NuSr5bJmbJTOlqgH3Fp%252fvBJdeaeuSss%253d%26risl%3d%26pid%3dImgRaw&exph=1400&expw=1052&q=Eliot+Porter+Landscape&simid=608035337653475506&FORM=IRPRST&ck=B9CEEEF593973DBFA408CDD4369A6AA1&selectedIndex=7&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0

[Alan Klein]

Here's his Glen Canyon shots.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Eliot+Porter+Glen+Canyon&mmreqh=SfXJhvHzREl3zwebXld7BYHA%2b3kOcHYyuG%2fzFKT0ivs%3d&form=INLIRS&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover