ADAM CLARK VROMAN No. 741 99 Around Zuni (The Twins) (Close) (700 Feet) Pasadena Public Library Title 1899 Platinum Print 7.85x5.8 in. on 8.5x6.5 in. paper ASG# ACV/1060

This richly printed close in view of part of the Sacred Thunder Mountain of Zuni; the Twins were part of the Zuni creation story. Here Vroman applies a distinctly modernist approach.

Alternate Titles: In Negative LL: 951. (In VromanÂ’s hand). Provenance: F. W. Hodge Album to Bennett Bros. 1900. Reference: PPL print: No. 742

Photographer and Bookseller Adam Clark Vroman (1856-1916) was the leading photographer of the Pasadena, California Arroyo Culture. He was the first important American photographer to use platinum prints to emphasize modernist tones and abstraction. He was the key Western American photographer using modern techniques and materials on living tribes and current traditions, rather than working in cultural preservation of a vanishing race. His landscape work is every bit as emotional as the later landscape work of Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin, Edward Weston, and Paul Strand. In 1893 he moved to Pasadena and set up Vroman's Bookstore, still in operation, where he sold books as well as photography supplies. He photographed primarily in Arizona and New Mexico.

The vast majority of his work was given to his photography collaborators, or to scholars and anthropologists. His primary archive of over 1,000 prints in albums are at the Pasadena Public Library and his negatives are at the Seaver Center, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum where the images are online.

Andrew Smith Gallery has been the leading dealer and collector of Adam Clark Vroman since the first an album in 1980. For a more detailed view of his life, work and materials:
https://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/misc/western/vroman.html

Excellent minor wear verso has a 1" piece of linen tape and edge markings from an album adhesion