High Country Crags and Moon, Sunrise, Kings Canyon National Park, California c. 1935 - 1979

Curator: Welcome. Editor: Here we have Ansel Adams' "High Country Crags and Moon, Sunrise, Kings Canyon National Park, California", a gelatin-silver print created sometime between 1935 and 1979. I am struck by the stark contrast – the land seems almost sculpted by the light. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Well, immediately I am drawn to the materials. The gelatin-silver print process itself. Consider the industrialization and the specific chemistry involved in capturing this image. Adams' dedication to technique, especially in the darkroom, transforming the captured image is a very interesting aspect of it, right? Editor: Absolutely, it feels like so much happens even after the initial shot. What exactly does that labor add? Curator: Everything! Think about the accessibility this offered. Photography, initially a highly specialized process, democratized image-making. Adams, with his sharp focus, presents nature, but consider how this representation itself becomes a commodity. He’s capturing and then producing multiples. To whom is he selling? And what does that mean about the market of landscape art at that time? Editor: That’s fascinating! So, by controlling the printing process, he wasn’t just documenting, he was manufacturing… something beyond just an image. Curator: Precisely! The 'making' here, the re-making in the darkroom, adds another layer of human intervention – another layer of "value" that we, as viewers, now consume. Is this pure wilderness, or a carefully crafted… object? Editor: I hadn't considered the print as an object itself. Thanks to your materialist lens, I see it so differently. Curator: And I'm reminded that landscape photography, however “natural,” always comes down to choices and processes – the material reality of its creation.