"Alders, Prairen Creek Beach, Northern California"

Plate 8 from Portfolio VI

gelatin silver print on cardboard

Signed (pencil) on recto, titled (pencil) and artist’s stamp on verso

Ansel Adams is known for his landscape photographs of nature reserves, especially from Yosemite National Park. Throughout his life, he visited forty national parks in North America.
After the end of World War II, Adams applied to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship so that he could continue his work in the national parks for a book project of his own. Adams was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship twice: in 1946 and 1948. Among other things, the fellowship enabled him to travel by air to southern Alaska.¹ One of these trips probably took him to Redwood National Park (Redwood National and State Parks) in Praire Creek on California's Pacific Coast near the Oregon border. The national park is known for its coast redwoods and large red alder groves.
At first glance, the very light, almost whitish bark of the trees in the b&w photograph might make you think they are birch trees. However, they are alders (Alnus rubra) from the birch family. The wood of the trees is reddish-yellow and the dye can be obtained by boiling the bark. It was used by the indigenous people of North America to dye fishing nets so that they were less visible in the water.²
The print is from Portfolio VI, published in 1974 by Parasol Press, New York. Adams chose ten unusual motifs for it and made prints in a total edition of 110. "Adams thinks he has been typed as 'nature boy' too long and too unfairly: certainly his work with and for the Sierra Club, for Yosemite itself and his major fights for conservation have been spectacular, but they have pigeonholed him. He thinks it is time the public had a chance to see more of the immense scope of his work, and we think he is right. As with previous portfolios, some of the photographs may be controversial, not the expected Adams. Some may regret this fall from conventional grace: others will welcome it as a newly-revealed perspective on Adams and his reactions to man, his works, and nature. And, though all his prints, since he was in his teens, have been beautiful, the prints he can make now surpass anything he has done in the past. Perhaps they are the most beautiful prints yet made in the medium of photography." wrote Beaumont and Nancy Newhall in the Foreword of Portfolio VI.³
The work is an excellent example of the Zone system developed by Adams and is certainly one of the highlights of the SpallArt collection.
(Christoph Fuchs)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alnus_rubra

[3] Beaumont und Nancy Newhall, Foreword, Ansel Adams. Portfolio VI, 1974 (übersetzt mit deepl.com), https://issuu.com/alexandrodiaz/docs/the_portfolios_of_ansel_adams__phot