Ansel Adams

The Estate of the photographer to The Friends of Photography, Carmel, 1984

Acquired from the above, 2002

Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light (San Francisco: The Sierra Club, 1963), p. 171

Andrea Gray, Ansel Adams: An American Place, 1936 (Tucson, 1982), pl. 12

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: The American Wilderness (Boston, 1990), pl. 42

Janet Swan Bush, ed., Trees (Boston, 2004), p. 48

Karen Haas and Rebecca Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection (Boston, 2005), pl. 58

Ansel Adams, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (New York, 2006), pl. 6

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 83

Andrea Gray Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams (Boston, 2012), p. 91

Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery, People’s Exhibition Hall, Ansel Adams: Photographer, February 1983, and traveling thereafter to: Beijing, National Museum of Art, March 1983; Tokyo, Odakyu Store Art Gallery, June 1983; Hong Kong Arts Centre, July – August 1983; San Diego, Museum of Photographic Arts, June – August 1984; Haifa, Museum of Modern Art, May – August 1987

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center, This Is the American Earth, September – November 1992; and traveling thereafter to: Washington, D. C., American Museum of Natural History, December 1992 – January 1993; Tokyo, Japan, Laforet Museum Espace, February 1993; Nagoya, Japan, Parco Co., Ltd, March 1993; Hiroshima, Japan, Izumi Wizwonderland, March – April 1993; Osaka, Japan, Nankai Electric Railway Co., Ltd., April – May 1993; Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Museum, May – September 1993

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center, Ansel Adams, a Legacy: Masterworks from the Friends of Photography Collection, March – June 1997, and traveling thereafter to: Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hunter Museum of Art, July – September 1997; Louisville, Kentucky, J. B. Speed Museum, September – November 1998; Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, December 1998 – February 1999; Japan, Nihombashi, Mitsukoshi Department Store Gallery, March, 1999; Japan, Ehime Prefecture Museum, June – July 1999; Japan, Toyama Prefecture, Tonami City Museum, July – August 1999; Japan, Hokkaido, Kushiro Art Museum, September – October 1999; Japan, Kawasaki City Museum, October – December 1999; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, May – August 2000

Billings, Montana, Yellowstone Art Museum, Ansel Adams: a Legacy, October 2002 – January 2003 and traveling thereafter to: University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center, Ansel Adams: a Legacy, August 2005 – January 2006; Loretta and Ligonier, Pennsylvania, The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, March – November 2006; Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Institute of Art, May – August 2007; Tucson Museum of Art, October 2009 – February 2010; Missoula, Montana, Missoula Art Museum, October 2011 – April 2012; Helena, Montana, The Holter Museum of Art, January – April 2013; Charlottesville, Virginia, University of Virginia, The Fralin Museum of Art, June – October 2013

In 1932 Adams visited an area near the southern gateway to Yosemite known as Fish Camp, which had been devastated by forest fire several years before. There he created a series of tightly-composed images, no doubt influenced by his recent trips to visit photographers Edward Weston and Sonya Noskowiak, as well as others active in Group f.64. The group, founded that same year, was comprised of photographers who shared a similar modernist aesthetic; a recognizable style characterized by sharp focus, careful composition, an interest in the juxtaposition of disparate textures, and a lack of sentimentality. Another print of this image was featured in Adams’ first solo exhibition, held at Alfred Stieglitz’s An American Place gallery, in 1936.  

No other prints of this image in this size have come to auction in over 25 years. Prints are in the collections of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson; the Art Institute of Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum; and the National Museum of American History, Washington, D. C.