ANSEL ADAMS, Rocks And Limpets, Pt. Lobos, 1960, 14.25x18" gelatin silver print, signed in pencil on mount recto below print, photographer's address stamp on mount verso; stamped in black ink: Enlarged from a Polaroid Land / Type 55 P/N negative; stamped in black ink and completed by hand: TITLE Rocks & Limpets / NEGATIVE NO. Point Lobos Cal / CREDIT Polaroid Corp

In the 1940s Adams met the renowned photographer and teacher Minor White, and in 1952 they helped co-found Aperture magazine. They were both proponents of the expressive emotion-laden photograph. White's version of pre-visualization was more Zen-like, while Adams was keyed into the scientific methodology of the Zone system, looking at a scene while considering the materials and chemistry of the exposure. Minor made many views of rocks, and for years the two photographers had an ongoing visual dialogue.

Provenance: Lot 275 $12,500 Photographs from the Polaroid Collection June 2010

Adams, Ansel (b. San Francisco, CA, Feb. 20, 1902 - d. Monterey CA, April 22,1984). Ansel Adams is the leading figure in photography in the twentieth century and the creator of the most famous art photograph in the history of photography, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, as well as hundreds of dramatic landscape images.

His attraction to the beauty of the natural world and art was both instinctive and part and parcel of his childhood. Adams joined the Sierra Club in 1920 where he found his true community among its members. Through the Sierra Club he grew interested in mountaineering and conservation, serving as a director from 1934-1971.

In the 1920s he practiced the style of Pictorialism, but by the time he helped found Group f/64 in 1932 he was dedicated to promoting the straight, unmanipulated photograph as an art form. He met Alfred Stieglitz in New York in 1933 and was given a one-man show in 1936 at An American Place.

Adams subsequently helped establish the department of photography at New York City's Museum of Modern Art and in the formation of the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson (1975).

He was active as a technical and aesthetic consultant to every major photographic manufacturer and had the longest relationship with Polaroid, working over 2 years and sending many thousands of memos.

Good. Handling wear.