White Mountain Range, Thunderclouds,  from the Buttermilk Country, near Bishop, California by Ansel Adams

White Mountain Range, Thunderclouds, from the Buttermilk Country, near Bishop, California Possibly 1959 - 1981

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photography, gelatin-silver-print

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precisionism

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cloudy

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still-life-photography

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black and white photography

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snowscape

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landscape

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photography

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low atmospheric-weather contrast

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geometric

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sky photography

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geometric-abstraction

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gelatin-silver-print

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monochrome photography

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gloomy

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monochrome

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skyscape

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nature

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modernism

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realism

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monochrome

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shadow overcast

Dimensions: overall: 48.1 x 38.9 cm (18 15/16 x 15 5/16 in.)

Copyright: National Gallery of Art: CC0 1.0

Ansel Adams made this photograph of the White Mountain Range in California, using his camera and a darkroom, of course. It's all about light, right? How it falls and what it reveals. Look at the big cloud dominating the frame, how it's built up of so many soft grey marks. Adams coaxes us to feel the mass of it and the distance, it's almost sculptural. The smaller clouds feel like quick gestures, almost like doodles scattered across the sky, so different to the solid mountain range beneath. Photography is a constant act of framing, picking out what you want the viewer to see and asking them to share your view. When I look at this, I think of other landscape artists like Georgia O’Keefe, how they captured the epic scale and drama of the American landscape, the way to distill a place to its essence, its bones. It's a conversation across time.

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