B & W Eliot Porter in VC

[ed_candland1]

I had a hard time posting this because I hate to be negative of

anyone and particularly of someone that has the standing in the

photography community that Eliot Porter does. First I'd like to say I

have always enjoyed Mr. Porter's color work and appreciate what he's

done to bring color photography into acceptance.

 

There is an article in View Camera this month, part two of a series

on Eliot Porter�s life and work. This month�s installment is on the

forgotten body of black and white photographs that Eliot Porter

produced during his life. Now comes the part that was difficult to

post. All I could think when viewing this work was maybe it was

forgotten for a reason. There wasn�t a single image that moved me and

for the most part they looked like nothing more than bad snapshots. I

know it hard to tell what a print looks like in a magazine, but they

didn�t even look like they were decent prints.

 

The point of this post isn�t to slam Mr. Porter or the person who

wrote the article, but to ask the question; do we judge the work of

well-known photographers differently than others? Do we feel that

just because a photographer is of a certain acclaim that all his work

most be of a high level? I would venture to guess that we have all

seen an image by a well-known photographer and thought that it wasn�t

all that wonderful, yet because of his standing it�s been elevated

and a high value has been placed on it.

 

Lastly I think this may make a good case for destroying all

ones �duds� before one leaves this world.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to see what everyone else thought.

 

Thanks, Ed Candland

[ed_candland1]

There was one, the cover image of Georgia O'Keefe that I liked. I forgot about it becuase it was on the cover.

[mark_sampson]

My first glance at the magazine might make me agree with you. But the tiny selection and poor repro (not really VC's fault) don't give a good look at Mr. Porter's work. A book of his b/w work in the west was published in the '80s (?). I have it at home and it's awesome. He was a master of b/w before he ever found color. Most of the photographs are from the 1940s... before *everyone* went to the west to shoot, and judging from that viewpoint, his work is striking and original. IMHO, this works stands with Adams' and Strand's efforts in the same area at around the same time. Dig a little deeper before you complain... kind of like dissing Johnny Cash because you didn't like the five seconds of his music they played on the radio when his death was announced. Find that book (I can't remember the title), check it out, and then I think you'll agree with me that Porter earned his reputation.

[ed_candland1]

Mark,

 

I wasn't "dissing" Mr. Porter or anyone, just the selection of work that was shown in VC. I made a point to state I enjoyed Eliot Porter's work. The point was do we just take it for granted that all of the work of an acclaimed photographer must be good because was produced by (fill in the blank). I have not seen the book you talk about but I'll make a point to look for it. Thanks for the heads up.

[eric rose]

Sames goes for AA's color work. Extremely boring IMHO. Seems the crossover is difficult if you are outstanding in one or the other. There are many that are reasonably good at both colour and B&W but they aren't as good as either Porter in colour or AA in B&W.

[arne_croell]

I don't have the present VC yet, so I don't know what the selection was. One of my Eliot Porter books (title is simply Eliot Porter, published by NYGS)has about 8 b/w plates plus a few small ones in the text section, including a few that were in his show at Alfred Stieglitz's An American Place. Those were mostly done in that late 30's. They're pretty varied in subject matter and well above snapshot level. I like most of them.

[tito sobrinho]

Mark, I have the book and the title is Eliot Porter's Southwest- ISBN 0-8050-1863-8. Outstanding BxW pictures.

[lex_jenkins]

I'm fortunate to live near the Amon Carter Museum, which inherited the bulk of Porter's estate. At a large display earlier this year of his work there were, in addition to his dye transfer prints and samples of his notebooks (field and darkroom), examples of his b&w photography.

 

Suffice it to say they were quite good.

 

Also suffice it to say that if my only knowledge of Ansel Adams' work was based on the tiny handful of prints exhibited at the Amon Carter I would hold Adams in *very* low esteem. I might be wrong - I hope I'm wrong - but the Amon Carter doesn't seem to hold a single decent example of Adams' work in its collection.

 

So don't put too much stock in what you saw of Porter's work in VC magazine. I haven't seen that issue and don't know which photos they chose but it may not be representative of his work.

 

And while there may be some merit to destroying one's lesser work, how many of us really know for certain what *is* our best work?

 

Anyway, where would literary scholarship be without the "bad quartos" of Shakespeare's plays? Gotta leave something behind for the researchers to use as material for their theses.

[mark_muse]

Lex, I like the way you think!

[nicholas_f._jones]

I now find that I inadvertently answered Ed's question about the merit of Eliot Porter's color work some time ago when I distributed my personal library books at various points around the house. Technique books here with the drymount press, mat-cutter, negative and print files and boxes; the art photography and painting books in my personal photography gallery; and the Sierra Club nature volumes, including the Eliot Porter 1962 "In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World", in another place with trail guides, back-packing manuals, etc. Not even the quotations from Thoreau could elevate this book to the status of art, in my opinion at that time, and I still feel the same way now. I see Porter as a recorder, pure and simple. As I look at these beautiful images, I'm asking myself why I don't go out today and enjoy the northeast woods myself--in their own right, without a camera. No insights, no new point of view or perspective, no fresh appreciation, and most of all no joy that had escaped me previously. But that's just one observer's personal point of view--for one thing, I've spent a lot of time in the woods already and maybe I'm not as easily moved by this sort of work as a confirmed urbanite might be.

 

More objectively, it certainly hasn't helped Porter's reputation as photographer that his color landscape style has since been overtaken (and, I think, improved upon) by calendar and coffee table book shooters, the greeting card industry alluded to in the VC article, and undoubtedly a great many talented amateurs. I see him as a historical figure--as well as a highly skilled technician with a good eye.

 

Actually, I don't find the b&w's in the article itself (except for the bird, presumably included for its relevance to Porter's early development) all that bad, although I don't think many people would put them ahead of the corrresponding well known studies by Ansel Adams and others. Personally, I find the O'Keefe portrait on the cover deadly frigid--the subject sitter is as lifeless as the portrait bust itself. Alfred Stieglitz's portraits of his wife were shot with an 8x10 (someone correct me, if I'm wrong on this) from as early as 1917, with immobile subject, but what a difference! And what about the Adams' handheld 35mm snapshot "Georgia O'Keefe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1937"? "Most obviously not posed, a true 'candid,'" wrote Adams in the Autobiography. Porter was perhaps wise in selecting non-human subjects to work with.

[scott_killian1]

Don't judge Porter's B&W work by what you saw in VC Magazine. I enjoy the magazine

for the content, but the reproductions and the image selections used for this article

are in no way representative of Porter's B&W work. To see that, pick up a copy of his

books Southwest Images as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. This was printed

fairly well for the time and in my opinion, shows Porter to be highly skilled in B&W. In

fact, after owning other books of his and thinking of him (perhaps unfairly) as only a

color photographer, I was really taken back by just how good some of his B&W work

was when I first bought this book. Also, many of these images were made 60-70

years ago and hold up very well today.

 

Great stuff and highly recommended.

[alec1]

Porter was every bit as good as AA. GET THE BOOK!

 

What I was amazed at was the amount of B&W work still unpublished. There's got to be more books in there if there are decent prints, or if his will allows new prints to be made from the old negs. I would LOVE to see what else is there.

[tito sobrinho]

Last night, I picked up the VC magazine at Borders. All those pictures (less the bird) are in the book that I mentioned above. Very poor reproductions by VC. They used to be better, but showing Eliot Porter's prints like that, is outrageous. They need to relearn how to do it maybe, by putting a call through to Lens Work.

[nicholas_f._jones]

I've just acquired the book mentioned in previous posts, Eliot Porter's Southwest (1985), and it is indeed an impressive collection--right up there, I would agree, with Adams' work on the same or similar subjects.