More About the Image:
This image was likely made circa 1937 around the time Ansel was meeting Georgia O’Keeffe, David McAlpin and friends for a ten-day excursion around the southwest. Ansel would make a number of memorable photographs on that journey, including this one. The light of the southwest fascinated Ansel Adams. He would write of it during his first time visiting in 1927, ‘I fell quickly under the spell of the astonishing New Mexican light. The magical transference from dusty wind and heat to the sparkling vistas and translucent air was unexpected and felicitous. Summer thunderstorms create the dominant symbolic power of the land: huge ranges of flashing and grumbling clouds with gray curtains of rain clearing both the air and the spirit while nourishing the earth.’ (AB pg.70) The spell under which Ansel fell was unshakable. A few years later, after returning from a photographic excursion to the area, Ansel would commit to being a photographer full time while putting aside his aspirations of being a concert pianist.
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.
