This site is written for fifth through eighth grade students. Students can explore the artist's life and photography in three sections under Student Activites: Becoming an Artist, The World of Eliot Porter, and Making a Statement.

An additional Activity Log encourages students to look carefully both at Porter's work and at their own environment and communities as inspirations for creating works of art.

• Eliot Porter combined his love of art and nature to establish an important model for looking at the natural world.

• Porter began making color photographs in 1939, when most photographers were working in black and white. He showed them the value of working in color.

• The artist made a fundamental contribution to environmentalism by showing the beauty of wild places around the world. His work is widely imitated, as can be seen in many of today's calendars, coffee-table books, and posters.

• While best known for his details of nature, Porter also photographed landscape views, architecture, and even people.