Ansel Adams, White House Ruin, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1942. Ansel Adams is regarded as one of the great masters of 20th-century photography, celebrated for his mastery of black-and-white and his lifelong defense of natural landscapes as cultural heritage. His work elevated landscape photography to the status of fine art, granting it the same dignity as painting or sculpture. Created in 1942, White House Ruin masterfully captures the contrast between the geological monumentality of the sandstone cliff and the ancestral ruins of the Navajo and Anasazi peoples, embedded in the rock as an eternal echo. The composition, with its almost operatic drama, demonstrates Adams’s virtuosity with the Zone System, translating the full tonal scale into a uniquely intense visual experience. 'Copyright Ansel Adams / Corbis / Cordon Press' at the bottom. Total dimensions: 30 x 23,5 cm on semi-gloss paper. Fine condition. Printed later, 2000s. The present photograph belongs to the body of images that defined Adams’s mature style and is considered a masterful example of how the camera can transcend mere documentation to become a universal cultural symbol. Ansel Adams stands among the most influential photographers of the 20th century, comparable to Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Imogen Cunningham, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Adams, Sebastião Salgado, Richard Misrach, and Michael Kenna, among others. An essential piece for collectors of classic photography, American cultural history, and visual heritage, condensing both Adams’s artistic vision and the monumental memory of the North American landscape.