Mountains, Colorado

Kenneth Josephson studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Chicago’s Institute of Design, receiving his master’s degree with a 1960 thesis entitled Exploration of the Multiple Image. Consisting of in-camera multiple exposures—with changes of camera position, focus, time, and subject—this project explored new photographic forms. In this image, the Rocky Mountains become an angular gradient, created by moving the camera eight separate times so that, as Josephson wrote in his thesis presentation, “static subject matter is given a sense of movement which results from the mixing of gray values and forms.” Hugh Edwards acquired 10 of Josephson’s photographs the year that he graduated, demonstrating his early commitment to youthful talent, especially in Chicago.