Canyon de Chelly
Original Photograph Negative: ca, 1942
Artist: Ansel Adams
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More About the Image
Ansel Adams regularly visited the southwest throughout his life. During these trips, Ansel ventured in and around Canyon de Chelly several times, making a handful of memorable images. Among those he made, this image and White House Ruin remain two of the most recognizable. Photographed while on assignment with the Department of the Interior for The Mural Project, he set up his tripod above the canyon rim near White House Overlook. By raising the horizon line and using the elongated petrified ripples of the sandstone to lead us to the harmonious and vanishing river bed below, the scene has a great sense of depth and distance. The landscape, one that Ansel called ‘one of the most beautiful parts of America,’ becomes immense and mysterious. (OH pg. 654) At the end of his life, Ansel communicated the significance of this image by including it as one of the variants in his last major project, The Museum Set.
This image, which contrasts the wispy stripes of the sandstone cliffs with the rolling clouds overhead, was taken from White House Trail, the only public trail into the canyon, which is still inhabited by the Navajo/Dine’ people and is largely reserved for their use. In Ansel’s composition, it’s easy to imagine these formations as they stood for millenia, cut by once-roaring prehistoric rivers, and battered by wind, sand, and rain. Despite the elements, they rise proudly from the desert, a reminder to us all of nature’s antiquity.
Beyond Yosemite and the High Sierra, the Southwest was one of Ansel’s best-loved regions of the country.In fact, it was a trip to Taos, New Mexico in the 1930s that led Ansel to cross paths with photographer Paul Strand, who helped inspire him to make photography his life’s work. The rest, as they say, is history.
