For
Eliot Porter, the vibrant colors of the world played an essential role in his
mission to photograph the beauty of nature. Throughout his 50-year career, he used
the dye-transfer technique of color printing, a process whereby three layers of
dye are superimposed on gelatin-coated paper to produce an image rich in tone
and more permanent than typical color photographs. Unlike the sweeping
black-and-white landscape images of Ansel Adams, Porter’s photographs offer a
sense of proximity, highlighting specific elements of the landscape.

This
image was one of 55 by Porter featured in Intimate
Landscapes, one of the first exhibitions of color photographs at New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Porter captures the fantastical twists of a cirio
tree in Baja California, Mexico, against a cloudless blue sky. He photographed
the Baja California region for the environmental organization the Sierra Club,
where his work, like that of Adams, helped expand the organization’s reach
internationally.