Authors: Mary Street Alinder
Marveling at the granite-domed landscape about Tenaya Lake, with its junipers improbably rooted in the slightest of cracks, Edward itched to set up his camera, but Ansel had not scheduled time for photographing along the way. They pressed on to Mono Lake and then down Highway 395 to the turnoff for Mammoth Lakes and beyond, parking at Agnew Meadows. They loaded the three mules that were waiting for them, then headed off under foot power to their campsite overlooking Lake Ediza, six miles away and at an elevation of ten thousand feet.
Charis was but twenty-four years old, twenty-eight years younger than Edward, but the altitude affected her more than it did anyone else. A great sleepiness came over her, and she had to be prodded up the trail. She was conscious enough to notice the swarms of mosquitoes, although Ansel reassured her that there would be none at Lake Ediza because it was too high for them. Her account of their first evening is delightful:
Ansel had explained the mosquitoes on our arrival: these were just the few that had followed us up; when they were annihilated all would be well. We had killed ten thousand apiece now, so Ansel offered a new theory: they didn’t like smoke; as soon as we got the fire started we would have peace. A big campfire was built before the tent, a smaller cooking fire near by. Oh, how those varmints hated smoke! Just had to call all their uncles and cousins to come play in it, too. Ansel made a last effort: they would go away at night when it got too cold.
23
The mosquitoes never relented for the entire week of their trip. Charis wrapped a sweater about her head and tied the sleeves under her chin. She coated her face with applications of lemon juice and refused to wash after she determined that the combination of built-up grime and citrus proved an effective deterrent. Edward photographed a grim Charis, squatting exhausted on the rough ground, knees akimbo, face deadpan for the camera.
24
Ansel and Edward worked independently, going off each morning with cameras and tripods. Edward found it tough to load his eight-by-ten-inch film holders in the required safety of a film-changing bag; in an act of great friendship (as any view-camera photographer would tell you), Ansel volunteered to load both his and Edward’s holders each night while Charis and Edward protected him as best they could from those dastardly mosquitoes. Evenings ended with convivial hot toddies.
Ansel made at least three photographs on this trip that he deemed worthy of the upcoming book, including one taken the very last day at the Devil’s Postpile, an unusual basalt cliff composed of geometric columnar shafts.
25
All three of these images are descriptive, not transforming. Edward made a couple of pictures of note, but as he had predicted, a return trip to Tenaya Lake later that year would yield even more.
On July 26, they hiked out, camping their last night at Red’s Meadow. Edward cooked dinner. Although he lived a self-described simple life, Edward took certain creature comforts very seriously, notably sex, coffee, and food. That night, Edward created a stew loyally described as “succulent” by Charis.
26
EDWARD WESTON’S
RED’S MEADOW STEW
Place in iron skillet:
one can beef stew
one can corned beef hash
one can tomatoes
one can sugar peas
Simmer until reduced and thickened.
After a last full day of photographing, they headed back over the Tioga Pass, arriving in Yosemite at ten o’clock at night. Not knowing when to expect them, Virginia had roasted two chickens hours earlier, which they attacked with relish. Suddenly, they heard shouts of “Fire!” Everyone sprang from the table and rushed outside to see flames crackling through the roof of Ansel’s new darkroom. Ansel and Edward locked eyes. Ansel just said one word: “Negatives!” One brave soul climbed up to the roof and forced a fire hose down into the burning interior, then someone else wielded a fire extinguisher.
27
Ansel, Edward, Charis, and Ron grabbed boxes and boxes of negatives. All had been stored in paper envelopes that offered scant protection. Some smoldered; others were charred at the edges. A bathtubful of water was drawn and armload after armload gently laid in, steam rising while Ansel carefully sorted through the damage, saving what he could.
28
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Ansel suggested that they call it a night.
29
They trooped back and raided Virginia’s refrigerator, then settled down with drinks to unwind. Ansel took his glass to the piano and played and played and played all the Bach he could remember. Charis recalled that “of the group, Ansel looked least like a ruined man.”
30
A few months later, Edward would write to Ansel, “You, and
your work
, mean a lot to me. Realize that I have almost no one who speaks my language.”
31
Ansel felt exactly the same way about Edward.
A small can of Eastman Kodak ribbon magnesium, Ansel’s old nemesis, had been set on the shelf directly behind the dry-mount press. The Zeiss Camera Company in Germany had sent a darkroom assistant to Yosemite in appreciation of the articles Ansel had written for them. A rigid Teutonic soul who had not endeared himself to anyone, this assistant was the guilty party.
32
It does not take much heat to ignite magnesium, which goes off in a small explosion.
At least five thousand negatives were destroyed that night, primarily work for YP&CC and his early soft-focus plates.
33
The fire charred the top edge of
Monolith
’s glass plate; from then on, Ansel had to crop, or cut off, that portion of the image whenever he made a print. In the early 1930s, he had used nitrate-based film, negatives made on which, such as
Frozen Lake and Cliffs
, are highly flammable. By chance, these were stored at some distance from the blaze; if they had been set on fire, Ansel probably would have lost everything.
The negative of
Clearing Winter Storm
, which would become one of his most famous photographs, nearly burned up. During the fire, its eight-by-ten-inch film negative got quite warm, and when it was plunged into the bathtub, water spots took up permanent residency.
Clearing Winter Storm
’s sky is generally blurry, the film grain reticulated to a greater extent than normal, possibly due to the negative’s exposure to heat just below its combustion point. Ansel always disliked printing this negative and made few prints from it for many years. But when people saw
Clearing Winter Storm
, they clamored for it. Ansel was pushed to make many prints over the years, the numbers beginning their climb with its appearance as an eight-by-ten-inch contact print in
Portfolio III: Yosemite Valley
published in 1960 in an edition of 208.
Beginning in 1916, Ansel had repeatedly photographed from the elevated vantage of Inspiration Point, with the length of Yosemite Valley spread in front of his lens, before finally making this, his most satisfying visualization of that scene. Weather proved to be everything to
Clearing Winter Storm.
From the lip of a great swoop of cliff, glazed with snow, the brilliantly white Bridalveil Fall plunges in a long, thin line. These forms on the right of the photograph balance El Capitan on the left, its face partially veiled in gray, vaporous mists. Clouds modulate the scene, extending far down the valley and obscuring Half Dome but adding a soft texture to the normal hardness of a place formed of granite.
Ansel was notoriously bad at dating his own negatives, believing that dates were of no importance to his creative work, although he kept immaculate records of each negative’s
f
.stop, lens, and exposure. Over time, Ansel forgot that
Clearing Winter Storm
’s negative had been through the fire, and erroneously dated the photograph 1944 in show after show and book after book.
34
But in 1945, he wrote a letter to the director of the art museum in St. Louis to explain that the print of
Clearing Winter Storm
he was sending needed to be framed under glass immediately upon arrival because its negative had been “water-marked” in his darkroom fire a few years earlier. Because of that damage, each print he made from it needed a large amount of spotting, which would not be detectable under glass.
35
Dr. Donald W. Olson is an astronomer and professor of physics at Texas State University who teaches a course that requires students to date significant works of art, literature, and historical events using physics and astronomy. They have worked with a few of Ansel’s photographs, traveling to Yosemite to make the essential measurements and observations. At first a moon in the picture was required, but then Don began using meteorological records, adding in the effects of sunlight and the angles of shadows in the prints. I assisted him on discovering when
Clearing Winter Storm
was made. Our facts: Ansel said it was made in December and that it first rained and then turned into a snowfall that he knew would quickly melt; the negative for
Clearing Winter Storm
had to have been created in the winter; it had to be before the July 1937 darkroom fire; and he could not have made it in the winter of 1936–1937 because he spent almost all of that time in San Francisco, much of it in the hospital. He was in Yosemite for the Christmas holidays in 1935. He probably arrived, as was his tradition, in early December to begin work on that year’s Bracebridge Dinner performance. By January 3, he was exhausted and stayed two nights in the Yosemite hospital for its peace and quiet, away from his noisy children. He soon left for San Francisco and then on to the East Coast.
Dr. Olson found the weather in that December allowed for the conditions found in
Clearing Winter Storm
. While it is not a certainty, after careful analysis he has proposed that the negative was made on December 12, 1935, between noon and two
p.m
. This was the first day that month of significant rain, and also snow that accumulated to a depth of half an inch. The sunlight and shadows indicate that day’s conditions could possibly produce the image that Ansel made.
36
Happy days with friends continued as Ansel took off on September 14, 1937, to join David McAlpin (as his guest), Georgia O’Keeffe, and Godfrey and Helen Rockefeller (Godfrey was McAlpin’s cousin) in New Mexico.
37
Carting three cameras (five-by-seven Juwel, four-by-five Korona, and 35mm Zeiss Contax) and an entire case of film, he soon found himself with the others at the Ghost Ranch in the picturesque Chama Valley, northwest of Santa Fe. A dude ranch might have seemed an unlikely setting for the very private O’Keeffe, but since she first laid eyes on its landscape of brightly striped cliffs, in 1934, she had claimed it as her artistic home. She spent long summers there, faithfully returning each fall to Stieglitz and New York.
38
Ansel responded to the landscape as well, impressed by the vast skies looming over mesas of red and pink, so very different from his Sierra.
39
He found the thunderclouds astonishing, piled one upon another, just begging to be photographed. He made forty exposures of them in one day alone.
40
He thought he had made his best photographs ever; in fact, they were not his best, although some were very good.
Although Ansel was immersed in the visual action about the Ghost Ranch, and O’Keeffe regretted having to interrupt work on a number of paintings, the group left on September 27 on a well-planned trip through what they called Indian Country. Their guide, Orville Cox, was the head wrangler at the Ghost Ranch and an authority on the life and culture of the native peoples.
41
They visited Canyon de Chelly National Monument, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and Laguna and Zuni pueblos, then continued on up into southwestern Colorado. During these travels, Ansel did make some great photographs.
Canyon de Chelly is a deep river canyon that wanders into the past. Cliff dwellings of its Anasazi residents, who vanished centuries ago, are chiseled into its perpendicular walls. After a day in the canyon, the six travelers were flushed out by a sudden and violent storm that brought flash flooding. When they arrived at a canyon overlook, Ansel whipped out his 35mm camera and took snapshots of his high-spirited companions lined up at the cliff’s edge to gain a view that included a distant line of Navajo on horseback, singing as they rode. Through a soft wind, the late-afternoon sun shone with a particular radiance.
42
Hearing light banter between O’Keeffe and Cox, Ansel turned his camera horizontally on the pair and made one exposure with Cox bent slightly forward obscuring O’Keeffe’s face. Quickly, Ansel knelt and made a second picture of Cox shyly looking at the ground while O’Keeffe slyly regarded him with a particularly flirtatious-seeming glance. For years, people have assumed that something was going on between them, but the truth is that Ansel was just at the right place at the right time, and by his framing fatefully isolated the two of them in a relationship that never was.
43
Henri Cartier-Bresson would later describe this as a “decisive moment,” one of those split seconds when action and composition are stopped by the photographer at exactly the perfect time.