More About the Image:
Made near Cartridge Creek in what would later be Kings Canyon National Park, Andrea Stillman refers to this area as ‘Ansel’s favorite wilderness region in the Sierra.’ (LatAA, pg.37) Dr. Rebecca Senf also reiterates that Marion Lake was ‘a place of special significance to [Ansel].’ (MaP pg. 44) He likely composed the image on a trip with the LeConte family in the mid 1920’s, the lake itself having been named by Joseph LeConte for his late wife Helen Marion LeConte. On that same trip, LeConte and his children placed Helen’s cremated remains beyond the lakeshore in a meadowy enclave of the granite bowl. Ansel would later help Joseph ‘place a large flat boulder over the grave’ to protect the burial site. (MaP pg45) In his treatment of the image, Ansel likewise creates a sense of a guarded and sacred space. Dr. Senf elaborates: ‘by framing his photograph with an imposing granite wall to the left and a rising mountain to the right, Adams suggested the protected nature of the pool.’ (MaP pg45) A few years later in 1927, Adams would include this image, and another from Marion Lake in his first major portfolio, the ‘Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras’ [sic].
