Sunset, Minaret Summit

Cedric Wright

1938

A gelatin silver print photograph in which the maker frames three figures in silhouette on a rocky overlook against the jagged Sierra peaks to evoke awe at a sunset landscape.

At first glance you notice the deep backlit silhouettes of an adult and two children anchored in the rough foreground while layers of dark forest and luminous, serrated mountain ridges stretch into a glowing sky.

By combining careful tonal control and intimate human scale, the image bridges modernist composition and the Romantic sublime, helping define how twentieth‑century photographers visualized wilderness, family, and conservation.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Photography Landscape Figure/ground relationship Pictorial space Modern art

Exhibitions

Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics

1940

Photographs of the Civil War and the American Frontier

1942

Photography

1944

The Museum Collection of Photographs

1945