Georgia O’Keeffe’s last visit with Ansel Adams, on video

The 50-year friendship between Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams began when they met in Taos, New Mexico, in 1929. It’s no surprise that O’Keeffe, who loved to trek across big country in Texas and New Mexico, took to him. He was an intrepid photographer, clambering over dangerous terrain to make his iconic photographs. (In late life, she rather disapprovingly noted that he was no longer a thin man.) They traveled together through the southwest in 1937, and a year later they took a pack trip in the Yosemite High Sierra.

I just discovered some unfamiliar footage of O’Keeffe and Adams walking and talking at her Abiquiu home, past that famous patio door, featured in the 1981 documentary, “Ansel Adams: Photographer.” It was their final meeting, and among her remarks: “I’ve always aimed at not looking like an artist.” She fondly recalls Adams up in the mountains, where he “leaped from rock to rock like a goat.” And they chat about Stieglitz, too. Click here to view the video.


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