Ansel Adams

oversized, signed in ink on the image, flush-mounted to Homosote board, signed, dated, and annotated 'Carmel' in black marker on the reverse, in the original white wood frame, circa 1931, printed in 1958 (400 Photographs, p. 64)

Gift of Ansel Adams to the photographer Don Worth, 1958

The Estate of Don Worth, 2009

This mural-sized photograph, printed in 1958 and mounted to Homosote board, has been lacquered. It is in very good condition. In raking light, the following are visible: faint scratches; small indentations that do not break the emulsion; a 2-inch crease that appears to break the emulsion, in the center right portion of the print; small creases in the upper left corner; and some tiny raised mounting bumps throughout. None of these detracts from the otherwise very attractive appearance of this print.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This important early Ansel Adams image is reproduced in a variety of monographs and

critical assessments of the photographer's work, including:

Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, The Eloquent Light (San Francisco, 1963), pp. 122-3

Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: An American Place, 1936 (Tucson, 1982), pl. 33

Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 131

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (Boston, 2001), pl. 46

Karen E. Haas and Rebecca A. Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection (Boston, 2005), pl. 4

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The large-format photograph offered here was given by Ansel Adams in 1958 to his assistant

at the time, the photographer Don Worth (1924 - 2009).  From 1956 to 1960, Worth was

Adams's first full-time assistant in the latter's San Francisco home and studio, where he

performed in a variety of roles.  Leland Rice, for his chapter in Don Worth: Close to

Infinity: Photographs from Six Decades (Carmel, 2005), interviewed Worth about those years,

and found that his duties ranged from 'proofing negatives, spotting and mounting prints,

testing equipment, correspondence, and house sitting when Adams was away,' to traveling

with Adams in search of subjects for the Kodak Colorama in Grand Central Station.  Mary

Street Alinder, in her Ansel Adams: A Biography (New York, 1996), says that Worth 'really

did it all for Adams,' and relates that Worth, a classically-trained musician, wrote the

score for the 1958 documentary film Ansel Adams: Photographer (p. 272). 

In his role as Adams's assistant, Rice has pointed out, Worth met a wide range of

photographers who visited or stayed in Adams's San Francisco home: Dorothea Lange, Ruth

Bernhard, Wynn Bullock, Brett Weston, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Minor White, Paul

Caponigro, and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, among many others.  As Worth told Rice, '"those

four years of day-to-day contacts were probably the most unique period of my life.  And it

was of incredible value in regard to what I learned about the creative process"' (quoted in

Rice, op. cit., unpaginated). 

A warm friendship developed between Adams and his assistant.  In his autobiography, Adams

had this to say about Worth and his talents:

'An excellent photographer, Don is also a very fine pianist and composer.  While a graduate

music student, he became interested in photography: a life pattern similar to my own.  Our

paths crossed in Yosemite . . . He continues to work intensely in his own creative

photography and has produced a very beautiful body of photographs that places him in the

front rank of American artists' (p. 175). 

Leaves, Mills College, has a long history in Adams's career.  It was one of 45 images that

comprised Adams's exhibition at Stieglitz's An American Place gallery in New York in 1936,

a landmark show that established Adams as an important new talent in American photography.

Andrea Gray Stillman, in her Ansel Adams: An American Place, 1936, quotes Adams as saying

that the subtle and subdued light of the image made the negative a very difficult one to

print.  The print of the image that was in the American Place show is now in the Princeton

University Art Museum, a gift of David McAlpin; another early print is in the collection of

the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The tactile, complex qualities of Leaves, Mills College, with its lush overlapping ferns

and interplay of lights and darks, gives the image a painterly quality that confounded at

least one of Adams's early critics.  In his autobiography, Adams relates an encounter with

the dean of Yale University's art department who became interested in the picture, but

could not believe it was a photograph from nature. '"What is the medium--"' Adams remembers

the dean asking. '"Is it an etching, a lithograph, or a detailed painting?"' to which Adams

replied, '"It is a photograph!"' (pp. 131-2).   

The tapestry-like qualities of the image made it an ideal subject for one of Adams's

folding screens, and Adams used it twice for that purpose.  Karen Haas, in her chapter on

'Japanese-Style Folding Screens,' in the volume Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection,

discusses in detail the use of Leaves, Mills College, on Adams's very first screen, made in

1936 (p. 141).  Andrea Gray Stillman, op. cit., also accounts for a second screen of the

image that was made by Adams in the 1950s for his own home.  This history of the image on

folding screens is reflected in the title sometimes given for the photograph—'Leaves, Mills

College, Screen Subject'—used by John Szarkowski in Ansel Adams at 100, and in Adams's own

The Eloquent Light.   

Leaves, Mills College, must have had special resonance for Worth, who had done post-

graduate work in music at Mills College in the summers of 1954 and 1955.  It was during the

second summer that he was introduced to Adams, an introduction that changed the course of

his life. As with Leaves, Mills College, many of Worth's own photographs reflect the rich,

repetitive patterns of the botanical world.  'A surreal drama unfolds in how the natural

objects are arranged in relationships so fantastic,' Leland Rice has written about Worth's

photographs, 'that they seem to be dreamed rather than formed.'