Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine

More About the Image:

On four successive mornings, Ansel and his wife Virginia drove to Lone Pine, California, hoping to capture a photo of the sunrise as seen from the east side of the Sierra.  Ansel had been in the Eastern Sierra on a major documentary assignment photographing the Manzanar Relocation Center and the interred Japanese-Americans at the insistence of the camp’s director, Ralph Merritt.  On the fifth day it was still dark and bitterly cold when he set up his camera on the new platform he had built on top of his car before retreating to the warmth of the cab.  As dawn drew near, he returned to the camera to await the sun’s rays on the meadow.  He would recollect, ‘I finally encountered the bright, glistening sunrise with light clouds streaming from the southeast and casting swift-moving shadows on the meadow and dark rolling hills.’ (E pg. 164)  At the last possible moment, as though directed by some unseen hand, one of the horses grazing in the meadow turned to offer a picture-perfect profile silhouette.  Many ears later, Ansel wrote fondly of this image: ‘Sometimes I think I do get to places just God is ready to have somebody click the shutter!’  This image would find its way into numerous publications and exhibitions throughout the artists lifetime as well as the posthumous book and exhibition, Ansel Adams at 100, and was also included in Ansel's last major project called 'The Museum Set,' a collection of photographs for which he wanted to be remembered.  Sets were initially meant to include either 25 or 75 total images, 10 which Ansel picked as absolute and which he considered exemplary to his body of work (colloquially referred to as his 'biggies').  Of all the images considered for the set made throughout the entirety of his career, Winter Sunrise from Lone Pine was chosen as one of his ten 'biggies.'