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Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. Better known for black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park. The Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is one of Ansel’s most famous photographs.
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Ansel Adams and Fred Archer developed what became known as the zone system as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs. Ansel Adams used large-format cameras, despite their size, weight, setup time and film cost, because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in images.
Ansel Adams was born in the San Francisco, California February 20 1902 to Charles and Olive Adams. He was an only child. When Ansel was four years old, Ansel was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an aftershock from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, breaking his nose. Ansel’s left-leaning broken nose was never corrected and remained crooked for his entire life.
Music became the main focus of his later youth. Possessing a photographic memory, Adams quickly learned to read music and play the piano. Through a series of dedicated piano teachers. Music provided the channeled emotional outlet he craved. Ansel applied himself seriously toward becoming a concert pianist.
Ansel Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. The famous valley was the first place in the United States to be designated a protected nature area by a Congressional act, signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864. He wrote of his first view of the valley which so inspired him, “the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious… One wonder after another descended upon us… There was light everywhere… A new era began for me.”
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Ansel’s father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera, during that visit and took first photographs. He returned to Yosemite the following year with better cameras and a tripod. During the winter, he was to learn basic darkroom techniques while working part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher. Adams read photography magazines, attended camera club meetings, and went to photography and art exhibits. With his Uncle Frank Ansel explored the High Sierra, in summer and winter, developing the stamina and skill needed to photograph at high altitude and under difficult weather conditions.
Ansel Adams joined the Sierra Club, at age 17, a group dedicated to preserving the natural wonders of the world and resources. Adams was the custodian of the Ansel Adams Posters organization’s headquarters at Yosemite for four years. Ansel Adams remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director. He was first elected to the Sierra Club’s board of directors in 1934, and served on the board for 37 years. Adams participated in the club’s annual “high trips”, and was later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada.
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During 1919, Ansel contracted the lethal influenza which ravaged the world. Ansel fell seriously ill but recovered after several months to resume his outdoor life.
Ansel Adams had frequent contact with the Best family, while in Yosemite. The Best’s owned Best’s Studio. They allowed him to practice on their old square piano. In 1928, Ansel Adams married Virginia Best Yosemite Valley. Virginia later inherited the studio from her artist father in 1935. Ansel Adams continued to operate the studio until 1971. The studio, became known as the Ansel Adams Gallery, It’s still in the Adams family. Ansel Adams Posters
During his twenties, most of his friends came from musical connections, particularly violinist and amateur photographer Cedric Wright, who became his best friend as well as his philosophical and cultural mentor. Their shared philosophy came from Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy, a literary work which espoused the pursuit of beauty in life and art. Ansel Adams always carried a pocket edition with him while at Yosemite. It soon became his personal philosophy as well, as Adams later stated, “I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.” He decided that the purpose of his art from now on, whether photography or music, was to reveal that beauty to others and to inspire them to the same calling.
In summer, Ansel Adams would enjoy a life of hiking, camping, and photographing, and the rest of the year he worked to improve his piano playing, expanding his piano technique and musical expression.
Ansel Adams first photographs were published in 1921 and Best’s Studio began selling his Yosemite prints the following year. His early photos already showed careful composition and sensitivity to tonal balance. Ansel Adams Posters
In the mid-1920s, Ansel Adams experimented with soft-focus, etching, Bromoil Process, and other techniques of the pictorial photographers.But Adams steered clear of hand-coloring which was also popular at the time. Adams used a variety of lenses to get different effects, but eventually rejected pictorialism for a more realist approach which relied more heavily on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship. Ansel Adams Posters
In 1927, Ansel Adams contracted for his first portfolio, in his new style, which included his famous image Monolith, the vertical western face of Half Dome taken with his Korona view camera utilizing glass plates and a dark red filter (to heighten the tonal contrasts). On that excursion, he had only one plate left and he “visualized” the effect of the blackened sky before risking the last shot. As Ansel Adams stated, “I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print”. In April, 1927 Ansel Adams wrote confidently , “My photographs have now reached a stage when they are worthy of the world’s critical examination. I have suddenly come upon a new style which I believe will place my work equal to anything of its kind.”
With the sponsorship and promotion of Albert Bender, an arts-connected businessman, Adams’s first portfolio was a success (earning nearly $3,900). He soon received commercial assignments to photograph the wealthy patrons who bought his portfolio. Adams understand how important it was that his carefully crafted photos were reproduced to best effect. At Bender’s invitation, Adams joined the prestigious Roxburghe Club, an association devoted to fine printing and high standards in book arts. Ansel Adams was to learn much about printing techniques, inks, design, and layout which he later applied to other projects.At that time, unfortunately most of his darkroom work was still being done in the basement of his parent’s house. So Adams was somewhat limited by barely adequate equipment. Ansel Adams Posters
Between 1929 and 1942, Adams’s work matured and he became more established. In the course of his 60-year career, the 1930s were a particularly productive and experimental time. Adams expanded his works, focusing on detailed close-ups as well as large forms from mountains to factories. In 1930 Taos Pueblo, Adams second portfolio, was published with text by writer Mary Austin. In New Mexico, he was introduced to notables from Stieglitz’s circle, including painter Georgia O’Keeffe, artist John Marin, and photographer Paul Strand, all of whom created famous works during their stays in the Southwest. Adams’s talkative, high-spirited nature combined with his excellent piano playing made him a hit within his enlarging circle of elite artist friends. Ansel Adams Posters
In 1931, Ansel Adams was able to put on his first solo museum exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution , featuring 60 prints taken in the High Sierra. The Washington Post gave him an excellent review. “His photographs are like portraits of the giant peaks, which seem to be inhabited by mythical gods”. Despite his success, Adams felt he was not yet up to the standards of Paul Strand. He decided to broaden his subject matter to include still life and close-up photos, and to achieve higher quality by “visualizing” each image before taking it. He emphasized the use of small apertures and long exposures in natural light, which created sharp details with a wide range of focus, as demonstrated in Rose and Driftwood (1933), one of his finest still-life photographs.
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In 1932,Ansel Adams had a group show at the M. H. de Young Museum with Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston and they soon formed Group f/64, which espoused “pure or straight photography” over pictorialism (f/64 being a very small aperture setting that gives great depth of field). The group’s manifesto stated that “Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form”. In reality, “pure photography” did borrow from some of the established principles of painting, especially compositional balance and perspective, and some manipulation of subject and effect. By these standards, not only were “soft focus” lenses prohibited but Adams earlier photo Monolith, which used a strong red filter to create a black sky, would have been considered unacceptable.
In 1933 Ansel Adams opened his own art and photography gallery in San Francisco which eventually became the Danysh Gallery. During the summers, he often participated in Sierra Club outings, as a paid photographer for the group, and the rest of the year a core group of the Club members socialized regularly in San Francisco. During 1933, his first child Michael was born, followed by Anne two years later.
During the 1930s, many photographers including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans believed they had a social obligation to reveal the harsh times of the Depression through their art. Mostly resistant to the “art for life’s sake” movement, Adams did begin in the 1930s to deploy his photographs in the cause of wilderness preservation. In part, he was inspired by the increasing desecration of Yosemite Valley by commercial development, including a pool hall, bowling alley, golf course, shops, and automobile traffic. He created a limited-edition book in 1938, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, as part of the Sierra Club’s efforts to secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks. This book and his testimony before Congress played a vital role in the success of the effort, and Congress designated the area as a National Park in 1940. Ansel Adams Posters
In 1935, Ansel Adams created many new photos of the Sierra and one of his most famous photographs, Clearing Winter Storm, captured the entire valley just as a winter storm relented, leaving a fresh coat of snow. He had a solo show at the Stieglitz gallery “An American Place” in New York in 1936. The exhibition proved successful with both the critics and the buying public, and earned Adams strong praise from the revered Stieglitz. During the balance of the 1930s, Adams took on many commercial assignments to supplement the income from the struggling Best’s Studio. Until the 1970s, Ansel Adams was financially dependent on commercial projects. Some of his clients included Kodak, Fortune magazine, Pacific Gas and Electric, AT&T, and the American Trust Company. In 1939, he was named an editor of U.S. Camera, the most popular photography magazine at that time.
In 1940, Ansel put together A Pageant of Photography, the most important and largest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors. With his wife, Adams completed a children’s book and the very successful Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley during 1940 and 1941. Adams began his first serious stint at teaching in 1941 at the Art Center School of Los Angeles, which included the training of military photographers. In 1943, Adams had a camera platform mounted on his station wagon, to afford him a better vantage point over the immediate foreground and a better angle for expansive backgrounds. Most of Ansel’s landscapes from that time forward were made from the roof of his car rather than from summits reached by rugged hiking, as in his earlier days.
On a trip in New Mexico weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941,Ansel Adams shot a scene of the Moon rising above a modest village with snow-covered mountains in the background, under a dominating black sky. The photograph is one of his most famous and is named, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Over the next 40 years, Adams re-interpreted the image, his most popular by far, using the latest darkroom equipment at his disposal, making over 1300 unique prints, most in 16″ by 20″ format. Many of the prints were made in the 1970s, finally giving Adams financial independence from commercial projects. The total value of these original prints exceeds $25,000,000; the highest price paid for a single print reached US$609,600 at Sotheby’s New York auction in 2006. Ansel Adams Posters
In September 1941, Ansel Adams was contract with the Department of the Interior to make photographs of National Parks, Indian reservations, and other locations for use as mural-sized prints for decoration of the Department’s new building. Part of his understanding with the Department was that he might also make photographs for his own use, using his own film and processing. Although Adams kept meticulous records of his travel and expenses, he was less disciplined about recording the dates of his images, and neglected to note the date of Moonrise, so it was not clear whether it belonged to Adams or to the U.S. Government. But the position of the Moon allowed the image to eventually be dated from astronomical calculations, and it was determined that Moonrise was made on November 1, 1941, a day for which he had not billed the Department, so the image belonged to Adams. The same was not true for many of his other negatives, including The Tetons and the Snake River, which, having been made for the Mural Project, became the property of the U.S. Government.
Ansel Adams was distressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He requested permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo-essay first appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans. He also contributed to the war effort by doing many photographic assignments for the military, including making prints of secret Japanese installations in the Aleutians. Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his career, the first in 1946 to photograph every National Park. This series of photographs produced memorable images of “Old Faithful Geyser”, Grand Teton, and Mount McKinley.
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In 1945, Ansel Adams was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Adams invited Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston to be guest lecturers and Minor White to be lead instructor. The photography department produced numerous notable photographers including Philip Hyde (photographer), Benjamen Chinn, Charles Wong, Bill Heick, Ira Latour, Cameron McCauley, Gerald Ratto and many others.
In 1952 Ansel Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, which was intended as a serious journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations. He was also a contributor to Arizona Highways, a photo-rich travel magazine which continues today. His article on Mission San Xavier del Bac, with text by longtime friend Nancy Newhall, was enlarged into a book published in 1954. This was the first of many collaborations with her. In June 1955, Adams began his annual workshops, teaching thousands of students until 1981.
By the 1950s, Adams came to believe that he was on the down side of his creative life. He continued with commercial assignments for another twenty years and became a consultant on a monthly retainer for Polaroid Corporation, founded by good friend Edwin Land. He made thousands of photographs with Polaroid products, El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise (1968) being the one he considered his most memorable. In the final twenty years of his life, the Hasselblad was his camera of choice, with Moon and Half Dome (1960) being his favorite photo made with that brand of camera. Ansel Adams Posters
In the 1960s, a few mainstream art galleries (without a photographic emphasis) which originally would have considered photos unworthy of exhibit alongside fine paintings decided to show Adams’s images—notably the Kenmore Gallery in Philadelphia. In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall accepted a commission from Clark Kerr, the President of the University of California, to produce a series of photographs of the University’s campuses to commemorate its centennial celebration. The collection, titled Fiat Lux after the University’s motto, was published in 1967 and now resides in the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.
In 1974, Ansel Adams had a major retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Much of his time during the 1970s was spent curating and re-printing negatives from his vault, in part to satisfy the great demand of art museums which had finally created departments of photography and desired his iconic works. He also devoted his considerable writing skills and prestige to the cause of environmentalism, focusing particularly on the Big Sur coastline of California and the protection of Yosemite from over-use. President Carter commissioned Adams to make the first official portrait of a president made by a photograph.
Ansel Adams is renowned for his photography in Yosemite Valley. Here is a part of a quote from him to show his love for Yosemite Valley. “Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters. At first the colossal aspect may dominate; then we perceive and respond to the delicate and persuasive complex of nature.”
Realistic about development and the subsequent loss of habitat, Adams advocated for balanced growth, but was pained by the ravages of “progress”. He stated, “We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people… The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere.”
He was elected in 1966 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Adams’s photograph The Tetons and the Snake River has the distinction of being one of the 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization. These photographs eloquently mirror his favorite saying, a Gaelic mantra, which states “I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds.”
His lasting legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. As he reminded his students, “It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium”.
Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984, at the age of 82 from heart failure aggravated by cancer. When he died he left behind his wife, two children and five grandchildren.