In Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection, Rebecca Senf notes that Adams' 1930 portfolio of photographs from that season's Sierra Club Outing was priced at thirty dollars, although prints could also be purchased à la carte. Adams received orders for only eight full portfolios, making this the smallest number of portfolios produced in the series for the Sierra Club. While a Sierra Club Bulletin from this time indicates that Adams originally envisioned a portfolio of 25 images, the few sets that remain extant are each comprised of only 23 images. It thus is assumed that the portfolio as finally realized by Adams contained not 25 but 23 photographs.
In 1927, Adams, with the help of his friend and patron, Albert Bender, produced the first portfolio devoted to the High Sierra. For the making of this portfolio, Adams coined the term Parmelian to heighten the appeal of the photographs for "art collectors." The next year Adams was hired by William Colby as the official photographer for the Sierra Club's annual outing. His first trip was to the Canadian Rockies for the twenty-ninth annual outing. Adams continued to work with the Sierra Club for a number of years, traveling many times to the Sierra where he was given free reign over his subjects. During this period he produced a small number of portfolios for members of each party to purchase at the end of the trip.
'Seldom did I take specifically assigned pictures while serving as Official Photographer — even then, the greater part of my work was entirely self-motivated. I reveled in the limitless image resources of the world around me. To commemorate the outing, I made a portfolio of photographs that I sold at cost, thirty dollars, to other members of the trip. Its success was such that I also made Sierra Club outing portfolios for the 1929, 1930, and 1932 High Sierra trips' (Adams, quoted in An Autobiography, p. 142).
At the time of this writing, three of the 1930 Sierra Club Outing portfolios have been located: a set in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley (number 2); a set sold at Sotheby's on 22 April 2006 (number 5); and the portfolio offered here, number 3 from the edition.
Ansel Adams' Photography at Yosemite Park
