Taos Pueblo (book)
Taos Pueblo is a book by Ansel Adams and Mary Hunter Austin . Originally published in 1930, it was a seminal work in fine art photography by Adams. As a groundbreaking work, it marks the transition from Adams' pictorialist photographs to signature-like sharply focused images of the landscape of the American West and has the Taos Pueblo as its eponymous theme. The quality of the images and the position in the development of Adams' have led to it being described as "an astonishingly poignant masterpiece" and the "greatest pictorial representation of the American West" (the greatest pictorial representation of the American West).
Santa Fe
In the spring of 1929, Adams traveled to New Mexico with his wife to photograph landscapes and experience them with friends. In Santa Fe, New Mexico , they spent almost two months with the writer Mary Hunter Austin, and it wasn't long before Adams and Austin agreed that they would work together on a book project about the Santa Fe area. Austin introduced Adams to her friend and patron Mabel Dodge Luhan , whose husband Tony Lujan was a member of the Taos Tribal Council . Through Lujan's mediation, Adams obtained permission from the Taos Indians to take photos in the vicinity of the then relatively unknown Taos Pueblo.
After taking a few sample photos, Adams wrote to his friend and patron Albert Bender , who had previously produced Adams' first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras . Bender enthusiastically approved the work and contacted his friends at Grabhorn Press about the print. Adams and Austin worked independently on their respective contributions to the book; they didn't even see the work until the book was ready to print. Adams claimed, however, that he put the final selection of his pictures together to fit Austin's prose, and it is said that because of this, their text partly "mirrored the sturdy repetitions of the pueblo architecture" .
San Francisco de Asis Mission Church
Despite the title, one of the most succinct images in the book was taken at the San Francisco de Asis Mission Church , which is not part of the pueblo itself but is several kilometers away. Adams was captivated by the massive walls and buttresses of the church, and described them as "more of an outcrop of the earth than an object that was built on the earth" (seem an outcropping of the earth rather than merely an object constructed upon it) at the same time, the church was a symbol of the simmering cultural conflict in the area between the Indians and Hispanics ; the Catholic Church was built in the Indian style and represented the survival of the Taos Indian culture through cultural adaptation out of necessity.
Special paper
Although Taos Pueblo was published as a book, the illustrations are true prints from photographs hand-made by Adams. Adams insisted that the book should have a uniform appearance throughout, and in order to meet these high standards, a special paper was made that was used for both the texts and the photographs. Adams received assistance from Will Dassonville , a friend and photo paper maker in the Bay Area . Dassonville ordered a paper in a warm color tone based on rags from a paper mill in New England and said delivery in two stacks. One went to Grabhorn Press for the text pages and the other was mass-coated by Dassonville with a silver bromide emulsion. Adams was able to produce his prints directly on the paper, which resulted in an extraordinary color gradation and a matt surface. Over the course of several months in the fall of 1929, Adams personally made approximately 1,300 prints for the book.
expenditure
The book was produced in a limited edition of 100 signed and numbered copies, plus eight artist's copies, each copy containing twelve original prints. Bender put the price at $ 75 per copy, which at the time of the Great Depression was especially high by assuming that the average annual income of an American family to $ 1,300. However, Bender was targeting his wealthy friends and within two years the edition was sold out. Bender quipped: "In the stock market reports, I only see Ansel Adam's photographs as a trading object that is growing."
In 1977, in cooperation with Adams, the New York Graphic Society published a facsimile edition of the original, in which gravure prints were used instead of the original photographs. This edition was sold in a limited edition of 950 copies signed by Adams. In the afterword of the edition, the photography historian Weston Naef wrote :
“With Taos Pueblo we see a commitment to light and form as essential building materials for the picture. Each shot was taken in the brightest sunlight, which in turn created deep shadows. Sunlight and shadow are at the same time friend and foe of photography. No film or photo print can depict the two extremes of bright sun and deep shadow equally well, and the result is often an unfortunate color compromise. Rich shadow details are implemented here at the same time with fine highlights in a way that shows Adams' natural sense for the most difficult technical problems of the medium and their solution. "
In September 2011, a copy of the 1930 edition sold for $ 85,000. In 2014, second-hand bookshops were selling the originals for $ 65,000 and $ 75,000 and the facsimile for $ 1,500 and $ 3,000.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ansel Adams, Mary Austin: Taos Pueblo. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Taos Pueblo by Ansel Adams .
- ↑ a b c Ansel Adams, Mary Street Alinder: Ansel Adams: An Autobiography. Little, Brown & Co., New York 1996: 72-74. ISBN 0-8212-2241-4 .
- ^ A b c Jonathan Spaulding: Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, A Biography. University of California Press, Berkeley 1995: 78-82. ISBN 0-520-08992-8
- ↑ 1930's Lifestyles and Social Trends . accessdate = 2011-09-06
- ^ "I note the Stock Market reports only Ansel Adams photographs as the sole commodity that is on the rise." Ann Hammond: Ansel Adams: Devine Performance. Yale University Press, New Haven 2002: 20-22. ISBN = 0-300-09241-5
- ↑ With Taos Pueblo we see a commitment to light and form as the essential building blocks of a picture. Every exposure was made in the most brilliant sunshine which in turn created deep shadows. Sunlight and shadow are at the same time the photographer's friend and foe. Neither films nor papers can record the two extremes of bright sun and deep shadow equally well, and an unhappy tonal compromise is often the result. Rich shadow detail is here realized simultaneously with delicate highlights in a way that proves Adams' native sense for the toughest technical problems of the medium, and how to solve them. Ansel Adams, Mary Austin: Taos Pueblo. New York Graphic Society, Boston 1977: Afterward.
- ^ Abebooks query
