Edward Weston

mounted, inscribed with a copyright symbol by the photographer in pencil on the mount, numbered 'W29 P12 4,' and inscribed with the Limited Editions Club copyright by him and numbered and annotated in unidentified hands in pencil and with a typed Leaves of Grass title label on the reverse, matted, 1941 

The photographer to his sister, Mary Weston Seaman

By descent to her daughter, Jeannette Seaman

By descent to her nephew, John W. Longstreth

The Dayton Art Institute, Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister, January - March 1978, and traveling to:

New York, International Center of Photography, July - September 1978; and

The Oakland Museum, February - March 1979

This print:

Kathy Kelsey Foley, Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister (The Dayton Art Institute, 1978, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 54

Other prints of this image:

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, with illustrations by Edward Weston, the Paddington Press reprint of the 1942 Limited Editions Club edition (New York, 1970), facing p. 60

David Featherstone and Peter C. Bunnell, eds., EW: 100, Centennial Essays in Honor of Edward Weston (The Friends of Photography, Carmel, 1986), fig. 33

This photograph, on slightly cool, semi-matte paper, is in generally excellent condition. There is faint silvering in the darkest areas of the print, a typical indication of the photograph's age. Upon very close inspection, in raking light, a few faint hairline impressions are visible at the center of the print. The photograph is on a heavy-weight, cream-colored mount that has darkened with age. On the reverse, along one vertical edge, there are the remains of paper and adhesive, likely from a sheet of paper overlay that was at one time attached. There is also a paper remnant along the bottom edge, on the reverse, where a caption may have been attached. Portions of two old linen hinges on the reverse cover part of the typed label.
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The label reads:

'Song of the open road

'................................W 29'

This photograph was taken early on in Weston's travels for the Leaves of Grass project.  Houserock Valley, Arizona, is located in the northern section of Grand Canyon National Park, just south of the Utah border.  Once a wild buffalo refuge, Houserock Valley sits between the Vermillion Cliffs on the west, and the Colorado River to the east.  Part of Coconino County, this area also once served as the backdrop for George Herriman's comic strip Krazy Kat, which was published in American newspapers between 1913 and 1944. 

Weston and Charis Wilson spent several days at Grand Canyon, wandering the canyon's rim in search of interesting views.  Overwhelmed by what they found, Weston wrote to his sister May, 'Boulder Dam and Grand Canyon: almost too much to take in such rapid succession' (quoted in Conger 1558).  The nearby landscape of Houserock Valley must have inspired Weston, as the desert so often did.  A road winds its way along the desert floor, while a blanket of clouds hovers over the landscape.  It is the dramatic play of light and shadows on Houserock Valley that Weston has captured so eloquently in this photograph.

This image was reproduced in the Leaves of Grass volume.  Conger locates no prints of the image in any institutional collections.