Aspens, Northern New Mexico (V)
Original Gelatin Silver Photograph by Ansel Adams
Original Gelatin Silver Photograph
Negative Date: 1958 | Print Date: ca. 1973-77
19 x 15″ | Excellent Condition
Signed “Ansel Adams”
Learn More
Some photographs remained important to Ansel Adams long after the moment they were made.
Among them was Aspens, Northern New Mexico (Vertical), a photograph that discovered Ansel as much as he discovered it. As he recalled, “I was driving on the beautiful highway near the crest of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and… came across a strand of young aspen trees in mellow gold. I immediately knew there were wonderful images to be made in the area.”
The composition is deceptively simple: a strand of pale aspen trunks rising in quiet ranks, their luminous bark set against the darker tapestry of the forest floor and the woods beyond. Yet Adams often described this negative as one of the most demanding he ever printed. Achieving balance between the brilliant trunks and the richly textured shadows required exceptional control in the darkroom—an exacting process that made each successful print a small triumph of craft.
Aspens, Northern New Mexico (V)
Original Gelatin Silver Photograph
by Ansel Adams
Negative Date: 1958 | Print Date: ca. 1973-77
19 x 15″ | Excellent Condition
Signed “Ansel Adams”
Details of stamp and Artist’s signature on Aspens, Northern New Mexico (V)
Over time, Adams came to regard the image as one of the most representative works of his career. When assembling his final major portfolio project, the Museum Set—a collection of photographs he hoped would stand as the enduring statement of his life’s work—he selected the vertical Aspens as one of the ten “absolute” images that defined his artistic legacy.
Its significance was reinforced again in the early 1980s, when Adams partnered with the New York Graphic Society to produce a series of deluxe signed posters featuring a small group of his most celebrated photographs. Each was created with unusual care: printed from finely separated duotone plates on coated paper, mounted to handmade rag stock, individually numbered, and personally signed by Adams. Only 350 examples of each image were produced.
For that limited series—alongside such icons as Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico and Clearing Winter Storm —Ansel chose Aspens, Northern New Mexico.
Deluxe Limited Edition Posters
by Ansel Adams created in 1980 by Ansel Adams in partnership with the New York Graphic Society
Of the thousands of images he had created over his lifetime, only a small handful were chosen for this ambitious project. That Aspens stood among them suggests how deeply Adams valued the photograph: not merely as a striking composition, but as a distilled expression of the quiet power he sought in the natural world.
Seen today, the image retains that sense of stillness. The vertical composition echoes the upright grace of the trees themselves, drawing the eye upward through alternating bands of light and shadow. It is both stately and restrained, a moment of calm preserved in photographic form.
Photographs such as this remind us that Adams’ work was never simply about recording a landscape. It was about shaping a lasting experience of it—one so resonant that he chose to carry it with him, again and again, through the final decades of his career.
Aspens, Northern New Mexico (V)
Original Gelatin Silver Photograph by Ansel Adams
Negative Date: 1958 | Print Date: ca. 1973-77
19 x 15″ | Excellent Condition
Signed “Ansel Adams”
FOR QUESTIONS & MORE INFORMATION
Please contact originals@anseladams.com
or call 888-238-9244
Last Updated on March 26, 2026
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