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Rapids below Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley, from Portfolio One: Twelve Photographic Prints by Ansel Adams


Ansel Adams, Rapids below Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley, from Portfolio One: Twelve Photographic Prints by Ansel Adams, 1948, gelatin silver print, Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund, © artist or other rights holder, 51.211c

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Details
Title

Rapids below Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley, from Portfolio One: Twelve Photographic Prints by Ansel Adams

Related Titles

original language: Rapids below Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley

portfolio: Portfolio One: Twelve Photographic Prints by Ansel Adams

Artist

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)

Related People

dedicated to: Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)

publisher: Grabhorn Press (American, 1919/1920-1965)

Date

1948

Medium

gelatin silver print

Dimensions (H x W x D)

image: 7 1/2 in x 9 1/2 in; sheet: 7 1/2 in x 9 1/2 in

Collection Area

Photography

Category

Books, Portfolios, and Manuscripts

Photographs

Object Type

photograph

Culture

American

Credit Line

Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund

Accession Number

51.211c

Copyright

© artist or other rights holder

Terms

gelatin silver prints

photographs

Description

Adams produced seven portfolios between 1948 and 1976. A prolific printer who created every image himself, he made more than 13,000 photographs by hand for these seven sets. Only seventy-five copies of Portfolio One were made, initially selling for $100 each.

Primarily composed of landscape images made in the mid-1940s (a studio fire in 1938 destroyed most of Adams's earlier negatives), the set also features a 1938 portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, mentor and friend to Adams since 1933. He released the portfolio just two years after Stieglitz's death, dedicating it to the tireless champion of photography and modern art: "Expressions without doctrine, my photographs are presented here as ends in themselves, images of the endless moments of the world. I dedicate them to the memory and to the spirit of Alfred Stieglitz."

Dedicated to the memory of photographer and art arbiter Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams’s Portfolio One contains twelve landscape photographs produced between 1938 and 1948. The Museum’s set was purchased in 1951, just three years after its release. It is number 63 out of a total of 75, suggesting the popularity of the portfolio. In all, Adams created seven portfolios of his photographs, about which he later mused, "In retrospect I may wistfully question some omission (or inclusion) of an image, but the selections were logically and aesthetically agreeable at the time."

History
Exhibitions

2012 70 Years/70 Photographs Portland Art Museum

2015 FOTOFOLIO: Adams, Strand, Weston, Weston, White Portland Art Museum

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