A Winter Gallery — American Museum of Photography (SM)

George Fiske (U.S., 1835 – 1918)

“Distant View of the Domes (Winter Version)”

Albumen print, 5 x 8 inches, circa 1884

 

Fiske was the first photographer to reside in the Yosemite Valley year-round. Ansel Adams praised Fiske, calling him a “a top photographer, a top interpretive photographer.” While Fiske produced an entire series of winter views, the hovering cloud captured here may have been a special source of pride; the photographer pushed his heavy camera equipment for miles around Yosemite in a wheelbarrow he called his “cloud-chasing chariot.”

 

Even a rival Yosemite photographer, D. J. Foley, felt obliged to admit “Mr. Fiske has secured many pictures that are gems of the photographic art. His snow, cloud and storm effects have few equals in the photographic world.”

 

Another image by Fiske appears in the Museum’s Masterworks of Photography exhibit.