Hannah Shapiro
Cataloguer & Sale Coordinator
Lot 3
Ansel Adams(1902-1984)'Tetons and Snake River' (Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming)
25 March – 3 April 2025, 12:00 EDT
Online, New YorkSold for US$46,080 inc. premium
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Lucie Kessler
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Ansel Adams (1902-1984)
'Tetons and Snake River' (Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming), 1942
Gelatin silver contact print, printed early 1960s; mounted, signed in ink on the mount, the photographer's 'Special Edition of Fine Prints / Photographs of Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park / Grand Teton Lodge Company' stamp, titled and annotated print no. '3' and S.E.G.T. & Y. no. '1' in ink, on the reverse.
7 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. (19.7 x 24.1 cm.)
mount 11 7/8 x 16 in. (30.2 x 40.6 cm.)
Gelatin silver contact print, printed early 1960s; mounted, signed in ink on the mount, the photographer's 'Special Edition of Fine Prints / Photographs of Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park / Grand Teton Lodge Company' stamp, titled and annotated print no. '3' and S.E.G.T. & Y. no. '1' in ink, on the reverse.
7 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. (19.7 x 24.1 cm.)
mount 11 7/8 x 16 in. (30.2 x 40.6 cm.)
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Collection, San Francisco
Gifted by the above to the present owner, circa 1965
Literature
Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This is the American Earth (San Francisco, 1960) p. 15
Ansel Adams, The Print (Hastings-on-Hudson, 1968), fig. 1
Liliane de Cock Morgan, ed., Ansel Adams (Hastings-on-Hudson, 1972), pl. 56
Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1985), p. 192
James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 35
Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916-1984 (Boston, 1988), p. 331
Peter Wright and John Armor, The Mural Project: Photographs by Ansel Adams (Santa Barbara, 1989), p. 73
Andrea Gray Stillman and William A. Turnage, eds., Our National Parks (Boston, 1992), cover and p. 31
Ansel Adams: The National Park Services Photographs (London, 1994), pl. 137
Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), cover and p. 205
Lauris Morgan-Griffiths, Ansel Adams: Landscape of the American West (London, 2008), pp. 44-5
Rebecca Senf, Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (New Haven, 2020), fig. 6.7
Note
"As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes, and seas, and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence."
-Ansel Adams, from an address to The Wilderness Society, 9 May 1980
In late 1941, the National Parks Service commissioned photographer and conservationist Ansel Adams to photograph the vast, protected lands of the U.S. for display in the building of the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. Although it only took Adams a year to finish the project, it was shelved shortly after due to World War II. The resulting photographs serve as witness to the great American landscape, its National Park system, and to Adams's photographic mastery.
Bonhams is delighted to offer this contact print of Adams's revered image of the Teton Range and Snake River. Executed in the early 1960s in partnership with the Grand Teton Lodge Company, very few of these prints are known to exist.