Leaves, Mt. Rainier

More About the Image:
 

While Ansel Adams was more well known for his grand and heroic landscapes, he would also train his lens on the more intimate details of the natural world – especially if the weather proved uncooperative for his trademark vistas.  In Leaves, Mt. Rainier, we get a hint of such conditions with a smattering of tiny rain drops visible on the bracken ferns.  The scene proves no less luminous or ‘grand’ in experience however, as the delicate world at the artist’s feet teems with energy; the geometric and fractal nature of the leaves asserts a darting intensity.  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.