"El Capitan, Yosemite late Afternoon Light"

gelatin silver print

signed, dated and numbered on recto, artist lable on verso

For more than 50 years, amateur photographer Gordon Hastings has photographed the landscape of California and the American West at the highest level with large- and medium-format cameras, primarily with black-and-white film. In addition to the Sierra Nevada, Owen's Valley, the Central Coast, the Mojave Desert, and Death Valley, Hastings is a frequent visitor to Yosemite Park. As a member of the Photographic Society of Orange County, he consistently takes collective trips and outings to photograph. His choice of subjects is based on great American photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edwar Weston. The quality of his images is outstanding.
The picture shows the striking rock formation El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California. The partially vertical flanks rise up to 1,000 meters above Yosemite Valley. The highest point of the rock is at 2,307 meters. Due to its dimensions, El Capitan is a conspicuous landmark in Yosemite Valley and is considered one of the landmarks of the national park. The name El Capitan comes from Spanish and means something like 'leader' or 'captain'. It is said to have been coined in 1851, relatively shortly after the annexation of California by the United States, by members of the Mariposa Battalion, a freedman force of U.S. settlers who were the first whites to enter Yosemite Valley at the time. The etymological tradition comes from Lafayette Bunnell, a member of this troop. According to him, El Capitan is said to derive from the name Tu-tock-ah-nu-lah from the language of the Ahwahnee, an ethnic group of Paiute Indians and natives of the Yosemite Valley. Tu-tock-ah was the name of an Ahwahnee chief. So the natives had named the rock after one of their chiefs, from which the whites then made the 'chief's rock' El Capitan (see wikipedia).
(Christoph Fuchs)