Old Shingles

Ansel AdamsWW-1933-040428

1933·Gelatin silver print·18.7 × 23.7 cm (7 3/8 × 9 3/8 in.)

<p>Before becoming known for his sweeping depictions of the American West, Ansel Adams was a cofounder of Group f/64, an association of West Coast photographers who promoted a modernist aesthetic through technical precision. The group’s name refers to the smallest aperture on a camera lens, which secured the sharpest focus. An impeccable craftsman, Adams worked dilligently in the darkroom to produce pristine prints. His belief that “the most subtle quality of good photography” was “the rendering of minute textures” is apparent in the tiny lichens and weather–etched grooves of “Old Shingles.”This print was included in Adams’s 1936 one–man show at Katherine Kuh’s gallery in Chicago. Kuh would go on to be the Art Institute’s first curator of Modern Painting and Sculpture.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1933
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 18.7 × 23.7 cm (7 3/8 × 9 3/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Ansel Adams

Artist

Ansel Adams

Photography

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.

San Francisco, CA, USA

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