ABSTRACT
Amongst the many Ansel Adams photographs contained in the collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art is Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, Manzanar, California, 1944. In this chapter, the author examines the mount as materiality that is often added for the express purpose of exhibition where its significance is determined less by its practical function than by how prominent it is as part of the printed and displayed image. The rough, grainy paper surfaces and specialist printing techniques that first appeared on art gallery walls during the pictorialist movement were eventually shunned in favor of purely visual qualities such as detail and vantage point, which were claimed as specific to photography. More than parerga or passive decoration, the materiality of exhibition photography is revealed to be active and functional, not merely supplementing or supporting the image, but rather constituting it—materiality that makes the meaning..
