More About the Image:
Ansel Adams made this photograph circa 1929 while working on his collaborative book project about the Taos Pueblo with author Mary Austin. By this time, Ansel had made multiple trips to the southwest, its intoxicating light undeniable. He had written his father Charles Adams that same spring from Taos, stating ‘I am certain that New Mexico will [at some point] keep me half the year at least and I will meet with a great success. The wealth of material is beyond belief.’ (L pg.41) Gaining access to the Pueblo was not a simple matter, and his friend (and ‘Governor of Taos’) Tony Lujan succeed in holding a council meeting to grant Ansel access to the Pueblo grounds for one week. Each resulting book would contain twelve original Ansel photographs, including Winnowing Grain, printed in Ansel’s darkroom onto sensitized papers that were then bound together — to complete the project, Ansel would make 1,296 prints, an arduous undertaking. At the end of his life, Ansel communicated the significance of this image by including it as one of the variants in his last major project, The Museum Set.
