“Adams feels deeply what he sees, he has a reverence for the earth in all its variety, delicacy and strength, but he is the absolute reverse of effusive: he sees with such austerity, even severity, that some have mistakenly called him cold. He has an incomparable technical expertness in communicating what he sees and feels, and for half a century and more he has gone on making photographs so plainly stamped with his personal artistry that they hardly need his steeple-A signature on them. They have taught thousands how to see: they have become household images, they have steadily affirmed life.”
~ Wallace Stegner
This is one of the rarest of Ansel’s genius images and one of his very early masterpieces, I have only seen a handful of them over the last 40 years anywhere. It is just pure beauty.
I was in San Francisco last month exhibiting at an art fair there. I got a phone call from a good client there who is a very successful residential real estate broker. He told me to be ready the next day at 9am.. “I am going to pick you up at your hotel “ he said, to take me somewhere special. “Where" I asked? "You’ll see" he said.
We drove 20 minutes to a beautiful area and we got out at a relatively simple house in a serene, calm neighborhood. As we got out the car to my complete surprise he told me that this is where Ansel Adams was born and where he lived a big part of his life before he moved to Carmel. We enter the house and can you believe I am standing in the area where Ansel took this very photograph.
I then saw where he practiced his beloved piano and where his darkroom was, and where a great part of his photographic legends were printed before he moved to Carmel. I was overcome with emotion. It was a priceless gift and one of the most moving experiences of my life. Standing in the shadows of one of my photographic heroes.
