Before the Golden Gate

Ansel Adams | The Golden Gate Before the Bridge (1932)

“ONE BEAUTIFUL STORM-CLEARING MORNING, I looked out the window of our San Francisco home and saw magnificent clouds rolling from the north over the Golden Gate,” Ansel Adams wrote.

He grabbed his new 8-by-10 inch view camera and drove to the end of 32nd Avenue at the edge of Sea Cliff. He dashed along the old Cliff House railroad bed “to the crest of a promontory.”

“From there was a grand view of the Golden Gate and the wonderful evolving landscape of clouds,” he wrote. “I have been after that for 10 years, and at last got a really satisfactory plate.”

The only known mural print of this image was auctioned at Bonhams on October 2. It sold for $162,500.