Ship Deck

The spare, sleek forms of a ship’s deck appear in soft focus in this image, printed on a warm white photographic paper. Based in San Francisco, William Dassonville turned his attention away from the natural landscape in the 1920s, choosing instead to focus on the modern, manmade structures of the city’s waterfront.

Highly attuned to the texture and tonalities of photographic prints, Dassonville also made and marketed his own gelatin silver paper. Many photographers gravitated to the warm tonality and unique surface textures of Dassonville’s papers, including Ansel Adams in his early years.