Eliot Porter
Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico

Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico

© 1990 Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico
Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico
ArtistAmerican, 1901–1990
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico
DateSummer 1960, printed 1978
Place depictedTesuque, New Mexico, United States
MediumDye imbibition print
DimensionsImage: 8 5/8 × 8 1/2 in. (21.9 × 21.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mathew Wolf
Object number82.528.55
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Like Forman Hanna, Eliot Porter found inspiration in the
drama of clouds at sunset in the American Southwest. Yet Porter felt no
compulsion to keep his desert landscape in view, instead giving over the entire
frame to fiery red cirrus clouds against a mauve sky. Porter’s commitment to
recording the beauty of the natural world served a distinct social purpose. A
lifelong environmentalist, Porter considered such images “propaganda devices”
that raised awareness by picturing an Earth worth preserving. Vibrant color
photographs, which were considered garish and commercial by the art
establishment well into the 1970s, buttressed his project by more fully
describing the splendors of nature. His cause received a major boost with the
publication of In Wildness Is the
Preservation of the World
(1962), a highly successful book pairing Porter’s
photographs of ecologically significant places with excerpts from the Romantic
writer Henry David Thoreau.




ProvenanceMathew Wolf, Houston; given to MFAH, 1982.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited: "Eliot Porter: Intimate Landscapes," Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Ocean Springs, MS, Oct 2 - Nov 30, 1992(LN:92.10)

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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Clouds at sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico
Eliot Porter
July 1959, printed 1978
Dye imbibition print
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May 24, 1962, printed 1978
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Taos River canyon, Near Taos, New Mexico, from the series Intimate Landscapes
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Eliot Porter
June 9, 1977, printed 1978
Dye imbibition print
82.528.37
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Eliot Porter
September 30, 1963, printed 1978
Dye imbibition print
82.528.4
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Eliot Porter
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82.528.2