Pipes and Gauges, West Virginia, plate 10 from Portfolio V

Ansel Adams is best known for his photographs of national parks, which cemented popular ideas of the majestic American wilderness and turned Adams into an icon of the environmental movement. Less well known are his photographs of industry, which he photographed on commercial commissions to support his family. In this photograph, Adams captures the grimy pipes and gauges of a West Virginian factory. With his signature eye for tonal values and composition, the artist turns the shadowy inner workings of the factory into an anthropomorphic object of aesthetic contemplation.