Ansel Adams made one a lot like it in 1942. I now am certain I had seen it sometime in the past, and I'm sure the image was imprinted in my sub-conscious when I visited Canyon de Chelly in 1996. But there was no intentional effort to reproduce an "Ansel Adams" when I made this image. There were a limited number of angles from which the subject could be viewed, I liked what I saw, and I proceeded to make an image of it, unaware of any other influences. It wasn't until months after the trip, after determining the final, slight cropping of the image and printing it, that it occurred to me that Adams had made a similar image. When I located his "White House Ruin" from 1942, I was stunned by the similarity between the two versions. Interestingly, in his excellent book "Examples" (Little, Brown & Company, 1983, p. 129), Adams admits to having had much the same experience: "Only when I had completed the print months later did I realize why the subject had a familiar aspect: I had seen the remarkable photograph made by Timothy O'Sullivan in 1873, in the album of his original prints that I once possessed. I had stood unaware in almost the same spot on the canyon floor, about the same month and day, and at nearly the same time of day that O'Sullivan must have made his exposure, almost exactly sixty-nine years earlier. (His title was Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelle, N.M.) Obviously I had come across one of the most rewarding locations for a photograph of this remarkable relic, left by a tribe of Anasazi Indians who, apparently because of a continuing drought, were forced to abandon their homes and move elsewhere in the Southwest about A.D. 1200." Because of the similarity between the images, I've had mixed feelings about including it on this Web site. However, I believe it has value, first of all, in that it is a true expression of a personal experience, but also because it illustrates a certain empathy among the artists and the overpowering expressiveness of certain places. Despite the similarities, each image has its own unique sense of balance, characteristic of its creator. You be the judge. Here are the images:
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Does this image look
familiar?
