Ansel Adams

from a Polaroid Type 55 negative, mounted, signed in pencil on the mount, a Carmel studio stamp (BMFA 11), with title and annotation in ink on the reverse, framed, an Ansel Adams & Edwin Land exhibition label and a Polaroid Collection stamp on the reverse, 1968, probably printed between 1973 and 1977 (Polaroid Land Photography, p. 202; Singular Images, p. 53; 400 Photographs, p. 411)

Quito, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, From the Polaroid Collection: Ansel Adams, sponsored by the Embassy of the United States, October - November 2001, and traveling to 3 other venues through 2003 (see Appendix 1)

Naples, Florida, Museum of Art, Ansel Adams & Edwin Land: Art, Science and Invention, Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, May - July 2004, and traveling to 8 other venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

This photograph is in generally excellent condition. The mount is affixed to the mat along its top edge with 2 pieces of cloth tape. Karen Haas's and Rebecca Senf's book, 'Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection,' publishes the most comprehensive list to date of the studio stamps and labels Adams used throughout his career. The authors' assessment of the use dates of stamp 11 on the reverse of the print's mount is 1973 to 1977.
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.

The history of Polaroid, its cameras, and its photography collection are linked in innumerable ways to the figure of Ansel Adams.  Ansel Adams met Edwin Land in 1948, the year that the first Polaroid camera was marketed to the public, and in the decades that followed, Adams became Land's professional colleague, personal friend, and one of the earliest proponents of Polaroid's photographs collection.  For over 30 years, the technically-gifted Adams tested, critiqued, and helped to shape Polaroid cameras and film.  Delighted by Polaroid's responsiveness to photographers, and by the many innovations of Polaroid products—its 'instant' images, its superb Type 55 positive/negative film—Adams became a champion of Polaroid to the public and to his friends.   In 1963, he published his own guide and manual to the Polaroid process, Polaroid Land Photography.  And in 1974, the Metropolitan Museum of Art included a whole section of Adams's Polaroids in its retrospective Adams exhibition, with an accompanying catalogue, Singular Images. 

The collection of Ansel Adams photographs owned by the former Polaroid Corporation was the largest and most important collection of Adams's work in private hands.  The collection's over 400 Adams images include works from both traditional cameras and Polaroid cameras and film.  Among the over 30 murals of classic Adams photographs that hung in Polaroid's corporate offices were Moonrise, Hernandez; Clearing Winter Storm; Winter Sunrise; and the Snake River and Tetons.  These Adams classics, and many other images in the 16-by-20-inch size in the collection, from both conventional and Polaroid film, are too numerous to list.  Along with these works in traditional and mural formats, the collection includes several of Adams's published portfolios and dozens of small unique Polaroids.   Even seasoned Adams aficionados will be surprised by the variety and quality of the Adams work presented in this catalogue, some of it unpublished and little known.

Adams's role as first 'curator' of Polaroid's Library Collection provides a fascinating look at Adams's own tastes in the photography of his time.  (The genesis of the Library Collection is outlined in the entry for Lot 74 in the present catalogue.)  In a series of memos to Edwin Land and other Polaroid employees in 1956 and 1957, the first years of the Library acquisitions, Adams targets a group of photographers whose works were 'must-haves' for Polaroid's nascent collection.  Some—such as Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham—were already giants in the field.  But others, such as Minor White, Harry Callahan, and William Garnett, were photographers whose reputations were just beginning, and with an assured and practiced eye, Adams picked out works by this younger generation of photographers that were destined to become classics.

The image offered here, El Capitan—Winter, made with Polaroid Land film, has been called by Adams's biographer Mary Alinder the photographer's 'last great photograph.'  About this image, Adams wrote:

'Many of my most successful photographs from the 1950s onward have been made on Polaroid film.  A favorite image is El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise, made in 1968 with Polaroid Type 55 P/N material.  The greatest glory of Yosemite is witnessed during the dawn following a snowstorm.  On this snowy morning, I urgently searched the valley for a photograph, for soon after sunrise the trees and valley walls lose their white frosting of snow in the growing warmth of the day.  I found El Capitan, the largest single piece of granite in the world, heroically revealed as the clouds and mist flowed about its huge form in wreaths and ribbons.  One look at the tonal quality of the print I achieved should convince the unintiated of the truly superior quality of Polaroid film' (Autobiography, p. 302).