Photograph by Ed Pollard, Hasselblad H4D50 - 2017.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona

Artist Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)

CultureAmerican

Date1937, printed 1980

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 15 1/8 × 19 1/2 in. (38.4 × 49.5 cm)
Overall, Frame: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

SignedPencil, lower right corner of mat, "Ansel Adams"

PortfolioNumber 1463, Museum Set Edition

Credit LineGift of Selina and Tom Stokes

Object number2017.33

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a gelatin silver print that depicts two figures, Georgia O’Keeffe and Orville Cox. Both figures are wearing hats. O'Keeffe looks at Cox, who is looked at the ground. In the background are large cumulonimbus clouds.
Label TextAnsel Adams American, 1902–1984 Georgia O’Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1937 Gelatin silver print, 1980 In 1937, Adams, Georgia O’Keeffe, and a group of friends were led by Orville Cox, the wrangler at O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch, on a month-long camping trip. Adams typically used a large format view camera to make landscape photographs, but he also carried a smaller, more nimble 35mm camera, like the one he used to get this shot. Although taken on the fly, the photograph shows the telltale signs of Adams’s meticulously tonal landscapes: darkening clouds billow overhead, deep black hats halo O’Keeffe and Cox, and warm light illuminates their faces. Adams believed these visual qualities could signal the multisensory experience the travelers shared while standing on the edge of Canyon de Chelly. As he later recalled, “we watched a group of Navajos riding their horses westward along the wash edge, and we could occasionally hear their singing and the echoes from the opposite cliffs. The cedar and pinyon forests along the plateau rim were gnarled and stunted and fragrant in the sun.” Gift of Selina and Tom Stokes 2017.33 ProvenanceThe artistl; acquired from the artist's studio by Dr. and Mrs. T. Lane Stokes, March 12, 1981; Tom and Selina Stokes, October 1981; gifted to Chrysler Museum of Art, 2017Exhibition History"From Ansel Adams to Infinity," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, September 21, 2018 - January 27, 2019.