Ansel Adams was familiar with the Sonoma County countryside, having taken photographic commissions in the area as early as the 1930’s. This image made two decades later, with its receding and progressively obscured ridge lines, has an infinite character. Ethereal sky and temporal ground merge seamlessly in a perfect gradient of atmosphere. The image would be one that Ansel would reproduce on a large-paneled folding screen very similar to those found in China and Japan and dating back one-thousand years. In their research of Ansel Adams, Karen Haas and Rebecca Senf discuss how Ansel would have been very familiar with Asian art throughout his life, growing up surrounded by artwork from all cultures and doing commercial photography assignments for the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. Hass and Senf go on to cite Ansel who believed that only ‘using photographs that are as graphic, abstract, and tonally strong as possible’ are suitable for such presentation. (BMFA pg. 141) It is surmised that during his lifetime, Ansel only produced around twelve to fifteen screens in total, suggesting his opinion of this image was noteworthy as to be included among the few selected. In 1963, this image would also be selected as one of the sixteen plates for Portfolio 4, ‘What Majestic Word.’ 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.
