Golden Gate before the Bridge
Original Photograph Negative: 1932
Artist: Ansel Adams
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More About the Image:
Ansel Adams grew up in San Francisco in a home overlooking the Golden Gate. Following his marriage to Virginia Best, the two of them would build their home next door to his parents. One morning, he looked out his kitchen window to see billowing clouds rolling down from the north and shrouding the Golden Gate. He picked up his recently acquired 8x10 camera and equipment, and headed out to a nearby promontory overlooking the ocean. Before he could complete the laborious task of setting up the large camera, the ‘handsome composition [he had envisioned] disappeared in the swirling mists that veiled not only the distant hills but the crisp edges of the clouds.’ (E pg. 19) He ‘impatiently’ waited out the ephemeral fog ‘as the white masses formed and reformed without resolving into an effective composition.’ (E pg. 19) Eventually the mists dissipated and with the clouds in a ‘glorious array’ before him and a wind buffeting the camera, he tightly wrapped his focusing cloth around the camera to stabilize it and made the image. (E pg. 19) 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
With over 100 photographs spanning Ansel Adams’ extraordinary career Ansel Adams in Our Time brings Ansel back to the de Young Museum.
An original Ansel Adams photograph showing a San Francisco scene that hasn’t existed in nearly 85 years is hitting the auction block for the first time.
Ansel Adams is rightly celebrated for his iconic images of Yosemite, National Parks and the Southwest. We sometimes overlook some of his more sublime images from his home in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
