The Amon Carter Museum of American Art will present "Eliot Porter’s Birds," an exhibition highlighting rarely-seen color photographs of birds by the esteemed photographer that Ansel Adams described as the “master of nature’s color.” While Porter is widely celebrated for his color photographs of nature, his career-long focus on photographing birds is less known. This exhibition features these avian photographs drawn from the Carter’s extensive holdings of Porter’s work that is part of the museum’s renowned collection of American photography. "Eliot Porter’s Birds" features over 30 photographs and archival objects presented alongside excerpts from the artist’s extensive writings about his activities, giving visitors an opportunity to feel a direct connection with the artist.

"Eliot Porter’s Birds" offers an intimate look at an artistic fascination a lifetime in the making. Porter’s successful career included travels from Maine to China photographing the architecture and people he met there, but the subjects he returned to year after year were birds in their natural habitat. Committed to exploring the colorful beauty of the natural world, Porter found particular fascination in birds, photographing them every spring for more than 40 years. His continuing exploration of this subject was rooted in his desire to set a new artistic model for bird photography that aligned with the great lithographs of the nineteenth-century artist-naturalist John James Audubon. Like Audubon’s detailed illustrations of birds in nature, Porter’s photographs reflect carefully constructed compositions that purposefully depict his subjects in their natural habitat.