EDWARD WESTON Houserock, Arizona 1941 Signed Gelatin Silver Print 7.6x9.5 in. ASG# EW/1249 mounted, inscribed with a copyright symbol by the photographer in pencil on the mount, numbered W29 P12 4, and inscribed with the Limited Editions Club copyright by him and numbered and annotated in unidentified hands in pencil and with a typed Leaves of Grass title label on the reverseDramatic curve of the wash cutting into the desert floor while clouds and shadow show the drama of the Southwest skies.

Provenance; Edward Weston Sotheby's April 8, 2008 Lot 97 Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister [Mary] and other Photographs. This lot sold for $15,000. The catalog from this sale is included with the print. The description from the Catalog (Denise Bethel) reads:

This photograph was taken early on in Weston's travels for the Leaves of Grass project. Houserock Valley, Arizona, is located in the northern section of Grand Canyon National Park, just south of the Utah border. Once a white buffalo refuge, Houserock Valley sits between the Vermillion Cliffs on the west, and the Colorado River to the east. Part of Coconino County, this area also served as the backdrop for George Herman's comic strip Krazy Kat, which was published in American newspapers between 1913 and 1944

Weston and Charis Wilson spent several days at Grand Canyon wandering the canyon's rim in search of interesting views. Overwhelmed by what they found, Weston wrote to his sister May, Boulder Dam and Grand Canyon: almost too much to take in such rapid succession' (quoted in Conger 1558). The nearby landscape of Houserock Valley must have inspired Weston, as the desert so often did. A road winds its way along the desert floor, while a blanket of clouds hovers over the landscape. It is the dramatic play of light and shadows on houserock Valley that Weston has captured so eloquently in this photograph.

This image was reproduced in the Leaves of Grass volume. Conger locates no prints of the image in any institutional collections.

Throughout his life, Edward Weston (1886-1958) crisscrossed America by car, covering tens of thousands of miles, propelled by his belief that the camera should be used for recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself.

Weston was sensitive to open landscape and also emphasized detail in shadows and light with his effortless superior technique allowing him to create a career of masterpieces, many in 1941 in the desert regions; in general, he made the strangeness of the West, especially the Southwest, feel as natural as home (California]. Emily Neff The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950 Yale, Houston MFA 2006 p.187

As opposed to nineteenth-century landscape photographers seeking unclaimed subject matter, twentieth-century photographers such as Weston sought nothing less than to mine the already identified landscape for new meaningÂ…for the uncanny... Emily Neff The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950 Yale, Houston MFA 2006 p.187

Horizontal discoloration entire top 1" and bottom 1", mild abrasions, soiling and wear, mount front has margin scrapes verso of mount worn