More About the Image:
Ansel Adams made a handful of self-portraits throughout his career but this image remains the most indelible of the group. Ansel had been traveling around the Four Corners for weeks on a project for Kodak, and would remark that the weather never fully cooperated which created havoc with his schedule. Perhaps turning the camera on himself while despondent from the commercial work, Ansel spiritedly presents us with a mysterious, almost surrealist, image. It is tempting to believe we are looking up reverentially, when in reality we are likely peering down into a gully – everything seems inverted. The silhouetted figure stands heroic with the white gypsum veins in the sandstone appearing like a charged sky of lighting in the distance. In his left-hand Ansel holds his shutter release, but in his right-hand he holds an object of unknown origin. Is it a prize? An offering? A bounty? This gesture, the background and triumphant posture even seem lightly parodic, akin to a mimicry of Prometheus bringing fire or Thor’s Fight with the Giants. As a result, this somewhat lighthearted, self-referential scene plays on several fabled themes of being an artist: desire, fear, struggle, success and approval.
So wrote Ansel Adams, whose photographs of the varied and rugged landscapes of the region have imprinted upon the imaginations of millions around the world. Beyond Yosemite and the High Sierra, the Southwest was one of Ansel’s best-loved regions of the country.
