Lot 2

I felt I had accomplished something...I had achieved my first visualization! I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print.

ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984)

Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, c. 1927

Details

ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984)
Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, c. 1927
gelatin silver print, printed 1970s
signed in pencil (on the mount); title, date in ink and Carmel credit stamp (on the reverse of the mount)
image/sheet: 19 x 14¼in. (48.3 x 36.3cm.)
mount: 28 x 22in. (71.2 x 56cm.)

Provenance

From the artist;
to The Museum of Modern Art, New York;
Sotheby's, New York, Photographs from The Museum of Modern Art, October 22, 2002, lot 3

Literature

Adams, Yosemite and the Range of Light, Little, Brown and Company, 1992, pl. 54; Newhall, The Eloquent Light, Sierra Club, 1963, dustjacket and p. 45; Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 2; Stillman, ed. Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, Little, Brown and Company, 2007, pp. 35 and 414; Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man, Little, Brown and Company, 2012, p. 42

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Lot Essay

Adams first recorded Half Dome at the age of 14 with his Kodak Box Brownie. He took this magnificent photograph only eleven years later, in April 1927, having embarked on a challenging 4,000 foot climb through heavy snow. As Monolith engendered Adams' first 'visualization', he judged it to be 'one of the most exciting moments of my photographic career.'

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