Adams, Ansel.

Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (Signed Limited Edition)

Berkeley, CA: The Archetype Press, 1938. First edition. The famous early collection of Ansel Adams photographs taken along the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Limited to 500 copies, each signed by the artist, with 50 tipped-in photographic reproductions. A Near Fine copy with minor soiling to the white cloth and a small blue line on the rear board, previous owner's bookplate, otherwise in excellent condition and unusual for such a large book, binding measures nearly 17 inches tall by 13 inches wide.

A classic work from one of America’s foremost photographers and environmentalists. Adams was famous for pioneering a number of important techniques which helped mark his signature black and white style and was, during his lifetime, “recognized as the foremost landscape photographer on earth.” (The Atlantic) "Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail" was compiled as a collection of Adams’ work in an attempt to preserve Sequoia and Kings Canyon and have them declared as national parks – which happened two years after publication, in 1940, in part as a result of this book. The collection includes some of his most famous work, such as Half-Dome. John Szarkowski, Director of Photography at MOMA wrote: "Ansel Adams attuned himself more precisely than any photographer before him to a visual understanding of the specific quality of the light that fell on a specific place at a specific moment… This sensibility to the specificity of light was the motive that forced Adams to develop his legendary photographic technique.” Adams himself was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. Near Fine (Item #1394)