More About the Image:
This photograph was made April 10th, 1927 on the same excursion where Ansel visualized his famous Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. Ansel had left the valley floor with twelve glass plate negatives that fateful day, and this was likely the ninth or tenth negative he completed before training his camera on Half Dome. The knife ridge, that ‘seems to hover weightlessly as the valley’s walls converge in the distance’ is punctuated by a solitary figure at its far end. (MaP pg.53) This figure, barely visible, is none other than Ansel’s fiancée, Virginia Best, ‘her tiny figure providing an unsettling sense of scale.’ (MaP pg. 53) Dr. Rebecca Senf writes that the mountains in comparison to Virginia ‘look immense, underscoring the relative insignificance of human kinds in the vast wilderness.’ (MaP pg. 53) Although she may look dizzyingly close to the edge of the slopping granite slab, her hiking companions had little to fear – Virginia was a skilled and accomplished climber in her own right. An early director of the Sierra Club, she is credited with several categorized first ascents of peaks and routes throughout the Sierra. The image was later included in Ansel’s portfolio, ‘Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras’ [sic], an early fine art undertaking made with the financial backing of his patron, Albert Bender and which brought Ansel’s name a greater level of recognition among San Francisco social circles.
