Old Shingles

Before becoming known for his sweeping depictions of the American West, Ansel Adams was a cofounder of Group f/64, an association of West Coast photographers who promoted a modernist aesthetic through technical precision. The group’s name refers to the smallest aperture on a camera lens, which secured the sharpest focus. An impeccable craftsman, Adams worked dilligently in the darkroom to produce pristine prints. His belief that “the most subtle quality of good photography” was “the rendering of minute textures” is apparent in the tiny lichens and weather–etched grooves of “Old Shingles.”This print was included in Adams’s 1936 one–man show at Katherine Kuh’s gallery in Chicago. Kuh would go on to be the Art Institute’s first curator of Modern Painting and Sculpture.