Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916-1984 (association copy, inscribed by Wallace Stegner)
NY: Little, Brown, 1988. First edition. Hardcover. A nice association copy, inscribed by Wallace Stegner, who wrote the five-page foreword, on the title page: "For Leo Holub, in friendship. Wallace Stegner, Nov. 10 1988." Scarce signed by Stegner (and a posthumous book from Adams, who died in 1984). Holub was himself a prominent photographer and friend of Ansel Adams, with whom he studied; he founded the photography program at Stanford University (see this memorial "Remembering Leo" in Stanford Magazine) and is known for chronicling life in San Francisco as well as his portraits of artists. His papers are held in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Stegner in fact wrote a foreword for one of his monographs, Leo Holub: Photographer (1982), so theirs was indeed a friendship. This book is a selection of Adams letters edited by Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, who were Adams's assistants in the 1970s and 80s. With 115 black and white photos from Adams along the way. Stegner writes on the third page of his foreword (vii): "One goes to the letters for aspects of the whole man that the art excludes: how he coped with the warring demands of art and commercialism until the art by itself could support him; how jocular and gregarious temperament at once contradicted and enhanced the high seriousness of the photography. Life-in-letters or career-in-letters (and it is both), it doesn't matter what this selection of his correspondence is called; it enhances both life and career, for they were inseparable. The artist was only the highest stretch of the man." A square quarto in black cloth, with his signature stamped on the front board, gilt lettering to spine. Endpapers each reproduce a different letter; heavy glossy paper in the interior. With a chronology of his life and work, as well as an index, at rear. A very near fine book with a mild pushing to spine tail; in a very good or better jacket with very mild sunning to spine and a hint of creasing to spine ends and lower corners. A nice association copy that also unites two of the greats of American West landscape art and conservation in Adams and Stegner. Near fine / Very good. Item #2138
ISBN: 0821216910
More about the book:
"Handsomely produced, this volume combines the highlights of a lifetime of Adams's letter writing with his distinctively sublime photographs to communicate the development and maturation of the aesthetic vision of one of the 20th century's preeminent photographers."
Price: $1,250.00 save 5% $1,187.50