Artist: Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1904)
Title: In the Owens Valley
Size/Dimensions: 8 x 10 inches
Frame type/size: Wood frame 18 ½ x 16 ¾ inches, matted behind UV acrylic
Medium: gelatin silver print photo
Date created or painted: circa 1949
Signed: artist stamp “Photograph by Ansel Adams” and titled in pen on reverse. Also stamped “PROOF not to be used for Reproduction or Display.”
Numbered: no
Provenance: Ansel Adams Proof Collection: Elmer (Elm) Aldrich, was born in 1914 and died in 2010.... Aldrich was on the Sierra Club Board 1956-63 and was Vice President 1957-58. During that time, he was serving concurrently with Ansel Adams and they became friends... This large collection of Adams’ photos was kept in the Aldrich home until after both Elmer and his wife had passed away. They were discovered by heirs and stored until this current offering.
 
Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West, particularly Yosemite National Park. Adams helped develop techniques that favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography. Adams was a life-long advocate for environmental conservation, and his photographic practice was deeply entwined with this advocacy. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club, serving on the board for 37 years. He was later contracted with the U.S. Department of the Interior to make photographs of U.S. National Parks and Indian Reservations. For his work and his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Adams was a key advisor in establishing the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an important landmark in securing photography's institutional legitimacy. He helped to stage the MOMA’s first photography exhibition, helped found the photography magazine Aperture, co-founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and in 1979 made the first official presidential photo portrait at the commission of President Carter. 
Born in SF, his earliest memory is of the earthquake and fire of 1906 as a 4-year old. An aftershock three hours later knocked him on his face and broke his nose; he had to breathe through his mouth thereafter. A hypochondriac, he was kicked out of several elementary schools for being inattentive . Finally getting an 8th grade diploma from a private school, he hung it in the guest bathroom in his later years. At 12, he lived next to 16-year old Henry Cowell (who became a famous composer) and heard him practicing. This led to Adams teaching himself to play, eventually taking some lessons with Cowell, followed by the plan to pursue a career in classical piano. After many years of being a photographer, Sierra Club member, and pianist, he realized that at best, he’d only be a second-rate accompanist and teacher, so he gave up. At the age of 29, he gave his first solo exhibit. It was at the Smithsonian Institute, and the rest is history.