More About the Image:
Ansel Adams took his first trips to Alaska during his Guggenheim Fellowship in the late 1940’s. After visiting Glacier Bay in 1947, a handful of negatives were destroyed when Ansel’s light-tight carrying case was accidentally dropped into the water while off-loading from a seaplane. On his second journey in 1948, Ansel was intent on returning to Glacier Bay to revisit ‘the most extraordinary natural details in the interstadial forest.’ (AB pg. 241) This modernist composition was made on that second visit, and once again plays on Ansel’s use of the word extract – in place of abstract – regarding how he would have viewed the final image. The image was included in his Portfolio 4, published in 1964. In the foreword to that collection, Ansel wrote: ‘In some [images], the essences of light and space dominate [. . .] and the luminous insistence of growing things. Shape of nature, transformed into what the artist calls forms by the controlled eye and perceptive spirit, are presented here as the equivalents of experience.’ (P pg. undesignated)
