Lake Tenaya, Yosemite National Park

More About the Image:
 

Ansel Adams visited the shores of Lake Tenaya circa 1938 and made this photograph.  He had been there before, guiding Edward Weston to virtually this same spot a year prior during the latter’s Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937.  Ansel had made many visits to the region over a number of years and considered it one of the most beautiful places in the Sierra.  The lake later became a rallying cry for Ansel and the conservation movement as he, joined by Sierra Club President David Brower and others, campaigned against the reconstruction of the Tioga Road near the lakeshore and surrounding granite slopes.  By the 1950’s, they would ultimately fail in their attempts to prevent the road construction from taking place, leading Ansel to pen the ‘Tenaya Tragedy,’ an elegy that expressed: “I am an artist who also appreciated science and engineering, and I know we can’t keep everything in a glass case—with the keys given only to a privileged few. Nevertheless, I want people to experience the magic of wildness; there is no use fooling ourselves that nature with a slick highway running through it is any longer wild [. . .] I, personally, must assume my share of the blame because I failed to do my part before most of the damage was accomplished.’ (Gallery Website)  In 1958, Virginia and Ansel Adams started a series of photographs named The Special Editions of Yosemite series.  These photographs, made from Ansel’s negatives, but printed by a trusted assistant, were meant as more meaningful and treasured mementos than what was available for visitors at other shops around Yosemite Valley.  The inaugural series was made up of only a small selection of images, Lake Tenaya being one of them.  It was also published in Yosemite and the Range of Light, as well as the posthumous book and exhibition, Ansel Adams at 100.  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.