Ansel Adams : A Retrospective

ANSEL ADAMS: A RETROSPECTIVE I N C E L E B R AT I O N O F A N S E L’ S 1 1 9 T H B I R T H D AY — FEBRUARY 20, 1902 —

ANSEL ADAM S : A RETROSPECTIVE Please join us in celebrating Ansel Adams’ 119th birthday with a selection of work and stories spanning his entire career.

For many, the photographs of Ansel Adams are a portal to a different world.

Through Ansel’s striking images, the outdoors are transformed from an abstract concept—a world beyond our suburban cul-de-sacs or crowded city streets—into a reality. Here, in his photographs, are our lonely mountains, here are our rugged cliffs, here are our rushing rivers. There is perhaps no photographer in American history who stood for the ethos of stewardship for our shared environment as much as Ansel Adams, who over the course of his decades-long career did more than just introduce Americans to their wild places, but encouraged them to protect them.

Every work of art in this catalog is available for sale, either as an exclusive reproduction, or an original photograph handmade and signed by the artist.

Left: Ansel Adams in Merced Canyon, courtesy of the Adams Family Archives Cover: Ansel Adams sets up a shot on his car-top camera platform. Cedric Wright, Ansel Adams: Photographing in Yosemite, 1942, gelatin-silver print, Collection Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, © 1942 Cedric Wright (NFS)

1920s

An s e l A d a m s , “ B a n n e r P e a k , T h o u s a n d I s l a n d L a k e ,” 1 9 2 3 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129 Original Signed Photograph by Ansel Adams — $9,000

BANN ER PEAK , THOUSAN D ISLAN D LAKE

Adams took this picture on an extended pack trip in the Yosemite High Sierra with his friend Harold Saville. He was drawn to the “glowing evening cloud” that appeared after a drenching thunderstorm.

“I can recall the excitement of the scene. It seemed that everything fell into place in the most agreeable way: rock, cloud, mountain, and exposure …This picture still has a unity and magic that very few others suggested in those early years.”

— ANSEL ADAMS

Almost 90 years after Ansel and Harold’s 1923 trip, Michael (Ansel’s son) and Matthew (his grandson) ventured to Thousand Island Lake on a mission with National Geographic.

Their goal? To uncover Ansel’s “tripod hole” or vantage point from which the photograph was taken. In the published story “The Mountains that Made the Man” author Peter Esseck describes the expedition, where the team successfully discovered the point for Ansel’s final photograph.

Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake is situated in what is now known as The Ansel Adams Wilderness. Originally protected as wilderness by the 1964 Wilderness Act, it was first called the Minarets Wilderness. Renamed and expanded to honor Ansel Adams in 1985, it spreads over 230,258 acres, ranging in altitude from about 7,000 feet to 14,000 feet.

An s e l A d a m s , “ M o n o l i t h , T h e Fa c e o f H a l f D o m e ,” 1 9 2 7 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

M O N O L I T H , T H E FA C E O F H A L F D O M E On the chilly spring morning of April 10th, 1927, Ansel Adams set out along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to capture an image of the striking sheer face of Half Dome, one of Yosemite National Park’s most iconic natural features. Though Ansel knew the route well, having spent four teenage summers as the keeper of the Sierra Club’s nearby lodge in Yosemite Valley, his companions—his fiancée Virginia Best and three close friends, including his lifetime friend and fellow wilderness photographer Cedric Wright—picked carefully along the steep gully in the icy shadow of nearby Grizzly Peak.

This was not Ansel’s first journey to photograph Half Dome. In fact, nearly a decade earlier, a 14-year-old Ansel had visited this very spot on a family trip to Yosemite. Eager to experiment with his brand-new Kodak Brownie camera, young Ansel snapped several pictures of Half Dome, including one upside-down image, his favorite, taken accidentally as he fell off a stump.

As the 25 year-old Ansel hiked, he was in the midst of personal and professional upheaval.

An accomplished pianist with a passion for photography, Ansel had only recently realized that his photographic skills dwarfed his musical ones, forcing him to abandon his dream of professional musicianship. His life’s work lay ahead of him, farther up the trail...

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An s e l A d a m s , “ B r i d a l v e i l Fa l l , Yo s e m i t e N a t i o n a l P a r k ” 1 9 2 7 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

An s e l A d a m s , “ B a n n e r P e a k , M t . R i t t e r, Tr e e ,” c . 1 9 2 9 AVAILABLE AS: Original Signed Photograph by Ansel Adams — $12,900

1930s

An s e l A d a m s , “ N e v a d a Fa l l , Yo s e m i t e N a t i o n a l P a r k ,” c a . 1 9 3 0 AVAILABLE AS: Exceedingly Rare Original Photograph by Ansel Adams — Contact for Price

An s e l A d a m s , “ R o s e a n d D r i f t w o o d , S a n Fra n c i s c o , C A ,” c a . 1 9 3 2 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

ROSE AN D DRIFTWO OD

“My mother proudly brought me a large pale pink rose from our garden, and I immediately wanted to photograph it... but I could not find an appropriate background...I finally remembered a piece of weathered plywood, picked up at nearby Baker Beach.”

— ANSEL ADAMS

He balanced the board on two pillows on a table under a large north-facing window and made the exposure using natural light.

An s e l A d a m s , “ G ra s s a n d P o o l ,” c a . 1 9 3 5 AVAILABLE AS: Original Signed Photograph by Ansel Adams— $6,500

An s e l A d a m s , “ Te n a y a C r e e k , D o g w o o d , R a i n” 1 9 3 9 AVAILABLE AS: Yosemite Special Edition Photograph — From $325

1940s

An s e l A d a m s , “ M o o n r i s e , H e r n a n d e z , N e w M e x i c o” 1 9 4 1 AVAILABLE AS: Authorized Framed Reproduction — From $200

MO ON RISE HERNAN DEZ From Ansel Adams, in Examples: “I had been photographing in the Chama Valley, north of Santa Fe. I made a few passable negatives that day and had several exasperating trials with subjects that would not bend to visualization. The most discouraging effort was a rather handsome cottonwood stump near the Chama River. I saw my desired image quite clearly, but due to unmanageable intrusions and mergers of forms in the subject my efforts finally foundered, and I decided it was time to return to Santa Fe. It is hard to accept defeat, especially when a possible fine image is concerned. But defeat comes occasionally to all photographers, as to all politicians, and there is no use moaning about it.

We were sailing southward along the highway not far from Espanola when I glanced to the left and saw an extraordinary situation—an inevitable photograph! I almost ditched the car and rushed to set up my 8×10 camera. I was yelling to my companions to bring me things from the car as I struggled to change components on my Cooke Triple-Convertible lens. I had a clear visualization of the image I wanted, but when the Wratten No.15 (G) filter and the film holder were in place, I could not find my Weston exposure meter!

The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of the clouds in the west, and shadow would soon dim the white crosses.

I was at a loss with the subject luminance values, and I confess I was thinking about bracketing several exposures, when I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the moon—250 c/ft2. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this luminance on Zone VII; 60 c/ft2 therefore fell on Zone V, and the exposure with the filter factor o 3x was about 1 second at f/32 with ASA 64 film. I had no idea what the value of the foreground was, but I hoped it barely fell within the exposure scale.

Not wanting to take chances, I indicated a water-bath development for the negative.

Realizing as I released the shutter that I had an unusual photograph which deserved a duplicate negative, I swiftly reversed the film holder, but as I pulled the darkslide the sunlight passed from the white crosses; I was a few seconds too late!”

— ANSEL ADAMS

An s e l A d a m s , “A f t e r n o o n S u n , C ra t e r L a k e N a t ’ l P a r k ,” 1 9 4 3 AVAILABLE AS: Original Signed Photograph by Ansel Adams— $9,000

An s e l A d a m s , “ R a i n , B e a r t ra c k C o v e ,” 1 9 4 9 AVAILABLE AS: Original Signed Photograph by Ansel Adams— $7,500

1950s

An s e l A d a m s , “ E a r l y M o r n i n g , M e r c e d R i v e r, Yo s e m i t e ,” c a . 1 9 5 0 AVAILABLE AS: Yosemite Special Edition Photograph — From $325

An s e l A d a m s , “ T h e G o l d e n G a t e a n d B r i d g e f ro m B a k e r B e a c h ,” 1 9 5 3 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

T H E G O L D E N G AT E A N D B R I D G E F R O M BAKER BEACH, SAN FRANCISCO

Long before the bridge was built, the teenage Adams often took the streetcar from his home near Baker Beach to the waterfront downtown, caught the ferry across the Golden Gate, and spent the day roaming the Marin hills seen to the left in this photograph.

In the 1960s, the Sierra Club, with Adams’ help, fought the proposal to allow construction of high-rise apartment buildings on these hills. As a protest, he pasted tiny pictures of apartment buildings on top of the hills in this photograph and exhibited it in a San Francisco storefront. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area was established in 1972 and now protects these headlands.

An s e l A d a m s , “A s p e n s , N o r t h e r n N e w M e x i c o ,” 1 9 5 8 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

A S P E N S , N O RT H E R N N E W M E X I C O

While returning from an unsuccessful trip to Canyon de Chelly in search of a color photograph for Kodak, Adams happened upon this grove of aspens.

“We were in the shadow of the mountains, “ Adams wrote, “the light was cool and quiet and no wind was stirring. The aspen trunks were slightly greenish and the leaves were a vibrant yellow....I made the horizontal picture first, the moved to the left and made the vertical image at about the same subject distance. The few yellow leaves seen in the vertical image were not as bright as those in the horizontal version....

The majority of viewers of the horizontal image think it was a sunlit scene.

When I explain that it is represented diffused lighting from the sky and also reflected light from the distant clouds, some rejoin ‘Then why does it look the way it does?’ Such questions remind me that many viewers expect a photograph to be a the literal simulation of reality.”

1960s

An s e l A d a m s , “ M o o n a n d H a l f D o m e ,” 1 9 6 0 AVAILABLE AS: Yosemite Special Edition Photograph — From $325

MOON AND HALF DOME Ansel Adams made this image at 4:14 the afternoon of December 28, 1960 with a Hasselblad camera and 250mm Zeiss Sonnar lens, releasing the mirror before operating the shutter to minimize vibration. It was one of his last well known photographs.

Arguably, this is the definitive photograph of Half Dome and among the most famous images of Yosemite National Park.

Belying its later worldwide acclaim, “Moon and Half Dome” debuted for a very personal audience: the first publication of this masterpiece was as the wedding announcement for Adams‘ son, Michael, and his daughter-in-law, Jeanne in 1962. In “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs,” Adams recalls making “Moon and Half Dome:” “As soon as I saw the moon coming up by Half Dome I had visualized the image. …I have photographed Half Dome innumerable times, but it is never the same Half Dome, never the same light or the same mood.…Half Dome is a great mountain with endless variations of lighting and sky situations and seasonal characteristics; the many images I have made reflect my varied creative responses to this remarkable granite monolith.”

“Moon and Half Dome” appears on the cover of “Classic Images,” the book based on the Museum Set Collection, a retrospective portfolio of what Adams considered his strongest work.

“Moon and Half Dome” framed with a Premium Gray Welded Frame, Custom-Made for Yosemite Special Edition Photographs

An s e l A d a m s , “ U n i c o r n P e a k , T h u n d e r c l o u d s ” 1 9 6 7 AVAILABLE AS: Yosemite Special Edition Photograph — From $325

UNICORN PEAK, THUN DERCLOUDS

Ansel Adams captured this phenomenal image of “Unicorn Peak, Thunderclouds” with his medium format camera around 1967 in late spring or early summer. He was sixtyfive at the time, and was hiking across Tuolumne Meadows with his Hasselblad when he discovered this view. At the time, heavy snow still swathed the granite peaks of the Cathedral Range south of Tuolumne Meadows. Quite unusual for this time of year, the billowing thunderclouds piled high above the peak indicate that Ansel must have taken the photograph on an exceptionally hot day with heat creating massive evaporation to form the clouds.

Beneath this epic cloud formation sits Unicorn Peak, swooping upwards to touch the weathered sky. Ansel referred to peaks such as this in the Sierra Nevada as “sculptures of stone.”

An s e l A d a m s , “ E l C a p i t a n , W i n t e r, S u n r i s e ,” 1 9 6 8 AVAILABLE AS: Modern Replica Digitally Mastered Print — From $129

EL CAPITAN, WI NTER , SUN RISE

“I visualized the opalescent glow of the sun on the icy cliff. In an overpowering area such as Yosemite Valley it is difficult for anyone to make photographs that do not appear derivative of past work. The subjects are definite and recognizable, and the viewpoints are limited. It is therefore all important to strive for an individual and strong visualization.”

— ANSEL ADAMS

FOR QUESTIONS & MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT INFO@ANSELADAMS.COM OR CALL 209.372.4413

T H E A N S E L A D A M S G A L L E RY VILLAGE MALL Y O S E M I T E N AT I O N A L PA R K , C A 9 5 3 8 9