Ansel Adams 1902-1984

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Description

Ansel Adams
'surf sequence, san mateo county coast, california'

a sequence of 5 photographs, each mounted, signed by the photographer in pencil on the mount and with his Carmel studio stamp (BMFA 11), titled in an unidentified hand in ink, on the reverse, each matted, 1940, printed later (5)

Provenance

The Weston Gallery, Carmel, California, 1984

Literature

Other prints of these images:

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1976), pp. 22-25

Ansel Adams and Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), pp. 198-99 (four of the five)

Karen Haas and Rebecca Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2005), pp. 94-95

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001), pls. 54-58

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images, Boston, 1976, pls. 26-30

Britt Salvesen, John Szarkowski, and Amy Rule, Harry Callahan: The Photographer at Work (Center for Creative Photography, 2006), fig. 16

Catalogue Note

As of this writing, it is believed that the Surf Sequence offered here is the first full set of the sequence to appear at auction.

Ansel Adams made these photographs early one morning in 1940, as he drove from San Francisco to Carmel, California, on Highway One, pulling over occasionally to look out upon the rocky coast. In the space of about twenty minutes, Adams made nine negatives of the scene. Later, once he had developed his negatives, he selected the five masterfully composed images offered here as the definitive series. While the photographs are meant to be viewed together, Adams declined to prescribe a specific order in which they should be displayed: ‘The chronological sequence is not especially important, and the prints can be displayed in any order desired’ (Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, p. 23).