Ansel Adams

Acquired from the photographer, 1960

By descent through family

Ansel Adams, Natural-Light Photography: Basic Photo 4 (New York, 1952), ill. 31, p. 59

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 295 (variant)

"Perhaps snow subjects offer the most exasperating problems to be found in all Landscape photography. The photographer is confronted with extremes of tonal value and a minimum of texture (in the snow itself). . . The main difficulty is in the suggestion of white substance. The blank white of the paper is very inadequate, and, no matter how intense the blacks of the image are, unless there is some tone in the whitest part of the snow image there is no life whatever in the picture."

(Ansel Adams, quoted in Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, p. 416)

The photographs in Lots 27 through 31 were acquired by Bill and Winnie Kinard directly from Ansel Adams in late 1959 or early 1960, and they have remained with the Kinard Family for more than six decades.  These photographs are accompanied by a copy of the original typed correspondence with Adams on his early '131 24th Avenue · San Francisco 21, California / Telephone Skyline 1 1282' letterhead. When asked recently to reflect on these photographs, the Kinard descendants wrote:

'Our parents, Bill & Winnie Kinard, worked in Yosemite during their college breaks in the late 1930s.  It was during these years they met Ansel Adams.  Their mutual love of Yosemite found our parents seeing Ansel again at his home in San Francisco in 1959.  Ansel invited them in for drinks and he entertained them with his accomplished piano playing.  During their visit, Ansel helped our parents select winter images of Yosemite which he felt complemented each other.  As a follow-up to this meeting, Ansel sent a typed letter to our Mom in January 1960, sharing his ideas about how the mural-sized prints he personally developed should be framed and displayed.  Needless to say, we, as a family, have enjoyed these wonderful prints for over 63 years.  We trust anyone who acquires them will cherish them as much as we have.'