Signed and dated in pencil mount recto; signed, titled, and dated in pencil mount verso, as well as a price of “$25.00” in White’s hand.
Edward Weston made his last photograph of Point Lobos (and his last photograph ever) in 1948. Two years later, Minor White, one of Weston’s disciples, would visit Lobos and initiate a new era of West Coast photography: one that would revel in mystery, maintaining the precepts of straight photography yet taking image fidelity to its extreme limits in the darkroom. At its best, photography is a sort of alchemy—the profanity of matter is transformed into an essence transcending time and particularity. This process is epitomized in White’s “Twisted Tree”, as the vestiges of the dead cypress reach like a double-helix into the dissolving heavens. The image is closer to a dream than to waking life, as fog enshrouds the outcrop of bleached granite and cypress. This particular print is one of the earliest White made, bearing deep, brooding tones that suspend the tree between a barely discernible sea and sky on the continent’s edge.