Sangre de Cristo Mountains at Sunset, Tesuque, New Mexico

Eliot Porter's nature photographs have been instrumental in both the growth of the environmental movement throughout the world and the increased acceptance of color photography as an artistic medium. A pioneer in color landscape photography, Porter was committed to the dye transfer process, a complex craft that allows extensive control over image color in all its subtle variations. His photograph of a blue-gray cloud mass over the orange hills of the Sangre de Cristo range is both a literal translation of a particular time and place and an artistic vision, worthy of a Baroque painter, of clouds parting onto blue and white heavens.