Granite Ridge, Milestone Mountain, Sequoia National Park, California [RARE OUT-OF-SERIES GRABHORN PRESS 1927 PRINT GIVEN BY ALBERT BENDER TO ALMA LAVENSON]

Gelatin silver print, 1927, on buff cream translucent Kodak Vitava Athena Grade T Parchment Paper, image 18.4 x 14.6 cm (7-1/4 x 5-3/4 in.), sheet 30.3 x 25.2 cm (11-15/16 x 9-15/16 in.), with the notation 309 and Adams's signature in pencil immediately beneath image left and right, verso entirely blank, accompanied by the original folio folder with the Grabhorn Press letterpress series title and "AA" device on the front cover, Adams's penciled title "Milestone Mountain" inside, and his letterpress credit and the image number in pencil on back, the print installed archivally in a 20 x 16 in. cream wove mat, the folder within a pocket on reverse of mat. Provenance: Albert M. Bender (directly from Adams); and by his gift to Alma Ruth Lavenson; and by descent to her grandchildren. In 1926, the very next day after first meeting Adams, Albert Bender spontaneously arranged for Jean Chambers Moore to publish a portfolio of 18 images to be printed by the Grabhorn Press the next year in an intended edition of 150 copies, much of which was never printed or was destroyed by fire. Bender himself subscribed to 10 copies immediately and proceeded forthwith to corral takers for maybe half the edition. (Adams detested the title "Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras" conceived by Moore for Grabhorn commercialization.) The images, from 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 inch glass plate negatives, were contact printed uniformly for this publication on 10 x 12 inch translucent parchment paper, and some in other formats later. The present print, not on a Grabhorn mount having letterpress title, is not one of the 18 images in the Grabhorn publication but was printed in the same format in an unknown number, at least some of which would have come to Bender as the "godfather" of the project, along with surplus Grabhorn folders without letterpress titles. Bender gifted this print to photographer Alma Lavenson, and it descended to her grandchildren. In 1930 Bender introduced Lavenson to Adams and gave her a letter of introduction to Edward Weston. Two years later she was invited to participate in the famous Group f/64 show at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum. While she was not specifically named a member of that group, she has consistently been associated with it, and Adams said in his 1978 oral history "Conversations with Ansel Adams" for the Bancroft Library, "We had this group formed, with Edward Weston, Sonia Noskowiak, John Paul Edwards, Alma Lavenson, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, Henry Swift, and myself. We had several interesting shows--." This image is an example of Adams's best work at age 25, comparable to his iconic "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park," 1927 (CCP 2-GP-44, from the Grabhorn set). The print, dynamically balancing light and contrast either side of middle grey, is in excellent condition, without any imperfection apparent in the image surface. The sheet is also bright and clean. The accompanying original printed folder shows light wear at the edges and minor toning around the margins. Overall, the condition is as close to pristine as one could practicably hope. The Center for Creative Photography collection on-line shows one copy of this image, apparently in the same format, acc. no. 84.90.759. (CCP numbers its Grabhorn negatives in the format "2-GP-xx" but assigns no number to the negative for this image.) Among other copies, Christie's sold a CCP duplicate in 2021; Sotheby's sold a fine copy in 2012. The Lane Collection, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has a print (acc. no. 2018.2670) almost double in size at 38.4 x 28 cm and not definitively vintage, sold by Adams to the Lanes between 1967 and 1973. No print of the image has been located in the major museum and library collections in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Fort Worth or any other institutional collection apart from the Lane Collection at Boston and the Center for Creative Photography collection.…