Ansel Adams 1902-1984

Carmel, Center for Photographic Art, Ansel Adams: From the Private Collection of Margaret Weston, July - September 1995

Other prints of this image:

John Szarkowski, The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (Boston, 1977), p. 75

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 73

Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), pl. 42

Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 216

The print offered here was a gift from the photographer Ansel Adams to his good friend Maggi Weston.  It was Ansel Adams who was the godfather to Maggi and Cole's only child, their son Matthew Weston.  It was Ansel Adams who encouraged Maggi to open a photography gallery in Carmel, following her divorce from Cole Weston in 1974, and Ansel who supplied her with photographs for her first major exhibition. Ansel helped her find the gallery space on Sixth Avenue, between Dolores and Lincoln, in Carmel, where the gallery is still located, in an expanded form, today.  That first Ansel Adams show was a sell-out, with lines stretching for blocks, and its stunning success helped launch the Weston Gallery.  It was Ansel who introduced Maggi, early on in her gallery career, to the indomitable Harry Lunn, the East Coast dealer for Adams's work, and more besides.  Lunn introduced Maggi to the first photographs auctions in both New York and London, expanding her horizons beyond her West Coast stable of photographers.

Maggi Weston, in turn, became the premier dealer of Adams's images on the West Coast.   When, overrun with requests for his work, Adams decided to stop taking print orders in 1975, Maggi Weston took out a bank loan to secure one last batch of prints, knowing it was crucial for her stock of Adams's work to remain superb.  When she and Adams devised the idea of the 'Museum Set' of Adams's best work in 1980, she mortgaged her house to back the project.  Of his relationship with Maggi, Adams wrote in his Autobiography, 'The sincere and successful dealer can be a boon to the creative artist in any medium... I have been very fortunate; over the past few years my primary dealer has been Maggi Weston' (p. 362).

As Maggi summed up in the catalogue for an exhibition of her private collection of Adamses, From the Private Collection of Margaret Weston: Ansel Adams, at the Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, in 1995,

'This collection of work is a tribute to a man who has been of great importance in my life.  To simply say he was a dear, close friend, a man whom I admired and whose wisdom I loved and trusted does not begin to do justice to Ansel Adams's meaning in my life.  He was instrumental in encouraging me to pursue my desire to open a gallery based on the rich photographic tradition here in Carmel and on the west coast.  Ansel was of great help in providing guidance and his unshakable optimism.'