ADAMS ANSEL (1902 1984) Clearing Winter Storm Yosemite Natio

Sale 2208 - Lot 181

Unsold

Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000

ADAMS, ANSEL (1902-1984)
"Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California." Silver print, 15 1/2x19 inches (39.4x48.3 cm.), with Adams' signature, in pencil, on mount recto and his hand stamp with the title and dates, in ink, on mount verso. 1944; printed 1978

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Additional Details

Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light, cover and frontispiece.
Ansel Adams at 100, 89.
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, 102.
Letters and Images: 1916-1984, 369.
Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 46.
Yosemite: Ansel Adams, 1.
Ansel Adams (1972), 72.

Ansel Adams's name is synonymous with majestic photographs of American landscapes. After years of formal training as a pianist, Adams began to photograph professionally in 1930. A champion of Yosemite's natural beauty, his pictures reflect the highest standards of the craft of photographic printing.

In the decades before photography was recognized as a legitimate form of creative expression, Adams championed the medium tirelessly. He was a founding member of the f/64 group, in 1932, along with Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and other Bay Area photographers. (F64 refers to the lens's smallest aperture, which allows for the picture's sharpest focus.) Though this emphasis on technique was always important for Adams, the notion of pre-visualizing an image was central to his aesthetic.

He wrote that "Clearing Winter Storm came about on an early December day. The storm was first of heavy rain, which turned to snow and began to clear about noon...A moment of beauty is revealed and photographed; clouds, snow or rain then obscure the scene, only to clear in a different way with another inviting prospect. My visualization of the final print was quite vigorous. The subject had a very dramatic potential. The image could not be simply contrasty; all the values required interpretation consistent with a deep, rich expression of substance and light...

It is a fairly strong negative, and looks like one that would be easy to print. It is not! A certain amount of dodging and burning was required to achieve the tonal balance demanded by my visualization. I never retouch a negative. I think of the negative as the 'score' and the print as a 'performance' of that score, which conveys the emotional aesthetic ideas of the photographer at the time of making the exposure." (cf. Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.)

In 1940 Adams co-founded the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York, with Beaumont Newhall and David McAlpin. An early supporter of the environmental movement, he was a spokesperson for the Sierra Club. The author of numerous books and monographs, many of them best sellers, the recognition of photography as a fine art form would be unimaginable without his dedication and passion.