Signed in pencil “Adams” just below image at lower right; numbered 234 in pencil just below image at lower left. Titled in pencil on the inside of the paper folder, with pencil inscription by Adams: “With Love – To Mildred Johnson, June 30th, 1927. From Ansel.” One of Adams most important photographs, a breathtaking vision of Half Dome in the Yosemite Valley, presented by him to his musical partner, and near lover, some months after the prospects for romance had abated and he was once more in the arms of his future wife, Virginia Best. Adams had taken the picture on April 10, 1927, an event that was described by Mary Street Alinder in her superb biography of Adams published in 1996. “…On Sunday, April 10, he had made the biggest artistic breakthrough in his life… Still hard at work on his first portfolio, which had been set into motion exactly one year earlier by Albert Bender, Ansel had determined that he must make an image of Half Dome from a vantage point that had become firmly seated in his imagination… Ansel’s destination was the `Diving Board,’ which offered what he believed to be the best view in Yosemite… By the simple addition of a deep-red filter over the lens, which greatly increased the tonal contrasts, Ansel altered apparent reality to achieve his visualization of Half Dome. With this one act, Ansel stepped beyond the traditional photographic boundaries of the day. The sky was no longer light and bright; instead, it became a black velvet background for the smooth outline of the shattered, flat-planed face of Half Dome, rising majestically above its snowy shoulders. Looking at this image, we see Half Dome not with our own eyes but through Ansel Adams’s soul… Monolith is Ansel’s most significant photograph because with this image he broke free from all photography that had come before. Nothing of it smacks of pictorialism, or of Stieglitz, Strand, or Edward Weston. With its extreme manipulation of tonal values, it was definitely beyond the dicta of straight photography; this was a new vision, and it was his…” The projected portfolio for which this picture was taken, “Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras,” was sponsored largely by Albert M. Bender, and was the first significant publication of Adams’ photographs. Containing 18 “Parmelian Prints” (a fabricated term; the images are gelatin-silver prints on Kodak Vitava Athena Grade T Parchment), the portfolio was issued in a limitation of 100 sets, but some were destroyed in a warehouse fire, leaving about 75 which were sold and delivered, at $50 per portfolio. He also sold a limited number of individual prints, at $5 apiece. The original paper folder, printed at the Grabhorn Press, has “Paremelian Print No.______” at the top of the first page, and “Ansel Easton Adams” at the bottom.