More About the Image:
Ansel Adams made this image in 1962 with Polaroid film in the Marin Headlands just north of the Golden Gate. Shortly after meeting Polaroid inventor Edwind Land in 1948, Ansel wrote to him saying, ‘My interest in the new camera and its aesthetic potential is, as you know, considerable.’ (AB pg. 247) Over time, Ansel Adams was a dedicated practitioner of the Polaroid Land process, the intricacies of which promoted the precise visualization of the image prior to exposure with conventional materials. For over thirty years of his career, Ansel would help Polaroid to develop new films, serving as an invaluable consultant as well as an avid user of their products. Unlike a number of photographs of the coast that Ansel made during this era, perched high above the surf on rocky outcroppings, this one puts us at ground level distorting the depth. The glistening Rodeo Creek snaking its final path to the Pacific reflects the same texture and light as the distant ocean water compressing the space into a two-dimensional plane. Likewise, the frothy breaking waves take the same shape as the bilious cumulous clouds on the horizon abstracting the upper third of the frame. The image is marvelously modernist and a credit to the work Ansel was doing towards the end of his career. In his autobiography, Ansel said that he believed ‘many of [his] most successful photographs from the 1950s inward have been made on Polaroid film.’ (AB pg.256)
