ADAM CLARK VROMAN 793. Clouds Near Enchanted Mesa, 1899 6.1x8.1 in. Platinum Print ASG# ACV/1285 (framed)

Vroman's platinum print masterpieces of clouds rendered the drama and emotional power of pre-visualization, capturing the moment according to the paper and materials. VromanÂ’s high drama in these cloud views were achieved later by Ansel Adams in the 1930s and 1940s, by Paul Strand when he was in Taos in the early 1930s and by Edward Weston most notably on his Guggenheim trip through Arizona and New Mexico in 1941. Vroman was modern in his approach and materials well before Modernism became a movement espoused by the California F-64 School.

Photographer and Bookseller Adam Clark Vroman (1856-1916) was the leading photographer of the Pasadena, California Arroyo Culture. He was the first important American photographer to use platinum prints to emphasize modernist tones and abstraction. He was the key Western American photographer using modern techniques and materials on living tribes and current traditions, rather than working in cultural preservation of a vanishing race. His landscape work is every bit as emotional as the later landscape work of Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin, Edward Weston, and Paul Strand. In 1893 he moved to Pasadena and set up Vroman's Bookstore, still in operation, where he sold books as well as photography supplies. He photographed primarily in Arizona and New Mexico.

He was not set up to generate revenue from his photography and the vast majority of his work was given to him in albums to his photography collaborators, or to scholars and anthropologists. His primary archive of over 1,000 prints in albums are at the Pasadena Public Library and his negatives are at the Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum where the images are online.

Andrew Smith Gallery has been the leading dealer and collector of Adam Clark Vroman since the first album if acquired in 1980. For a more detailed view of his life, work and materials:
https://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/misc/western/vroman.html

Excellent. Minor wear lower margin right 1/16" red mark. Matted attached to mount with linen tape verso