"THE FOREMOST LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER ON EARTH": FIRST EDITION OF ANSEL ADAMS' AND NANCY NEWHALL'S THIS IS THE AMERICAN EARTH, 1960

ADAMS, Ansel and NEWHALL, Nancy. This is the American Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, (1960). Folio (10-1/2 by 14 inches), original green cloth, original dust jacket. $400.

First edition of a handsome Sierra Club folio featuring over 80 black-and-white photogravures by Edward Weston, Minor White, Eliot Porter, Cartier-Bresson and others—with 43 dazzling images by Adams, a beautiful copy.

"The epochal photo exhibit 'This is the American Earth' came together in 1955 at Ansel Adams's studio in Yosemite Valley" and later began to take form as a book at his home in San Francisco. Inspired by the Sierra Club's wish to honor pioneer conservationist Joseph LeConte, the exhibit and this handsome folio photobook were the outcome of a rich collaboration between Adams, Sierra Club Executive Director David Brower, and Aperture co-founder and interim MoMA curator Nancy Newhall. Newhall's elegant text highlights the over 80 black-and-white photogravures seen within—images by Adams, Eliot Porter, Margaret Bourke-White, Jacob Riis, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston, Minor White, Eliot Porter, Brett Weston, Werner Bischoff and others. With 43 of those images by Adams, This is the American Earth recognizes his brilliance "as the foremost landscape photographer on earth… In the history of his art Adams was an unprecedented combination of technical virtuosity and inspired eye… Adams took photography into a big, moody, exhilarating, Wagnerian country of inky peaks and dazzling snowfields, where no one had climbed before" (Kenneth Brower, Atlantic Magazine). First edition, first issue with no statement of printings on the copyright page. Trace of bookseller ticket removal to dust jacket front flap.

A fine copy.