Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | James Fee | Epiphany | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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| Eliot Porter Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah 1965, 22 September J. Paul Getty Museum © 1990 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Courtesy Getty Museum LL/16177 Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
"Eliot Porter: In the Realm of Nature" will be at the Getty Center June 13-Sept. 17. (2006)
Color is vulgar. At least, it was long thought to be so by fine art photographers. Color was the medium of advertising and masscult magazines; gelatin silver (black and white) was the medium of art.
Ansel Adams was so opposed to color that he walked out of the room when Eliot Porter tried to show him some prints. Porter staunchly defended his use of color. Yet he had his own ways of deflecting its vibrancy, muting the lushness that the natural world took on in a Kodachrome transparency.
Never did he find a better baffle for his color photography than when he worked in Glen Canyon. Because of the narrow walls through which the Colorado River and tributaries such as the Escalante flowed, little direct daylight reached the bottom where Porter traveled by raft. The dazzle of sandstone cliffs in sunshine could be captured there only as it was reflected in dark water.
In this 1965 picture, Porter used his camera to pan for a few nuggets of gold, letting the water break the rock face high above him into scattered fragments. In many Porter photographs employing this strategy, the dash of brilliant color is constrained by a composition that otherwise looks as if it had been photographed in black and white.
[Originally published in West Magazine : June 11, 2006, p.13]
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