Through The Lens by Aliza Kravatz

a book about ansel adams

THE ANSEL ADAMS GALLERY Village Mall Yosemite National Park, CA 95389

CONTENTS

1 | Through the Lens

Life Behind the Lens

II.

1920’s photographs

III.

1930’s photographs

IV.

1940’s photographs

1950’s photographs

Contents | 2

Born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902, Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist known for his technical expertise and his stunning black-and-white photographs of the American Southwest, Yosemite National Park, and the California coast. With more than half a century of camera work behind him, Ansel Adams stands as one of America’s greatest and best known landscape photographers. His career is punctuated with countless elegant, handsomely composed, and technically flawless photographs of magnificent natural landscapes. No contemporary photographer equaled the lifetime contributions of Ansel Adams in bringing public recognition of the art of photography or taught so widely the techniques of black and white photography. His strength as an artist is largely attributed to his tireless investigation of the methods of photography, developing a careful darkroom technique of exposure and development he called the Zone System.

6 | Life Behind the Lens

Striking photographs of Yosemite and the surrounding Sierra Nevada capturing the elusive visual myth and mood of these wild places became the wellspring of Ansel Adam’s consciousness and brought him widespread popular acclaim. His intimate understanding as well as passion for conservation of this pristine wilderness gave Ansel Adams the energy and tenacity needed to bring subjects to life for a wider public. Adams founded the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, which in turn created the Museum of Modern Art’s department of photography. His reputation has been firmly established by exhibitions in virtually every major American art museum, three Guggenheim Fellowships and a score of publications. Photography West Gallery features The Ansel Adams Room with a permanent rotating exhibition of ever-changing images by this legendary analog master.

Adams’ first photographs were published in 1921 and Best’s Studio in Yosemite Valley began selling his prints in 1922. In the mid1920s, he experimented with soft-focus, etching, Bromoil Process, and other techniques of the pictorial photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz who attempted to produce photography on an equal artistic plane with painting by trying to mimic it. Adams eventually rejected the pictorial method for a more realist approach which relied on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship. In the late 1920s, with the promotion of an arts-connected businessman Albert Bender, Adams’ first portfolio was a success and he began receiving commercial assignments to photograph the wealthy patrons who had purchased his portfolio. In 1928, Adams began working as an official photographer for the Sierra Club. In the 1930s, Adams began to use his photographs to promote the cause of wilderness preservation. In 1938, he published “Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail”, with the Sierra Club in an effort to secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks. The book and his testimony before Congress

8 | Life Behind the Lens

played a vital role in the success of the effort, and Congress designated the area as a National Park in 1940. In 1940, Adams organized “A Pageant of Photography”, the most important and largest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors. Adams also began teaching in 1941 at the Art Center School of Los Angeles and in 1945, he was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts. In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine “Aperture”, a journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations. In June 1955, Adams began annual workshops, teaching thousands of students until 1981. Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984 from heart failure aggravated by cancer. “Adams’ lasting legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. ” The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1985 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, an 11,760 ft (3,580 m) peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.

If Adams’s love of nature was nurtured in the Golden Gate, his life was, in his words, “colored and modulated by the great earth gesture” of the Yosemite Sierra (Adams, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, p. xiv). He spent substantial time there every year from 1916 until his death. From his first visit, Adams was transfixed and transformed. He began using the Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie his parents had given him. He hiked, climbed, and explored, gaining self-esteem and self-confidence. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent the first of four summers in Yosemite Valley, as “keeper” of the club’s LeConte Memorial Lodge. He became friends with many of the club’s leaders, who were founders of America’s nascent conservation movement. He met his wife, Virginia Best, in Yosemite; they were married in 1928. At the time, Virginia was an aspiring singer, and Ansel, the concert pianist shared her love of music. She also happened to be the daughter of landscape painter Harry Cassie Best. Best’s Studio in Yosemite Valley was a convenient place for Adams to display

12 | 1920’s Photographs

his photography, and seven years after their marriage, Virginia inherited the business. The couple had two children. The Sierra Club was vital to Adams’s early success as a photographer. His first published photographs and writings appeared in the club’s 1922 Bulletin, and he had his first one man exhibition in 1928 at the club’s San Francisco headquarters. Each summer the club conducted a month-long High Trip, usually in the Sierra Nevada, which attracted up to two hundred members. The participants hiked each day to a new and beautiful campsite accompanied by a large contingent of pack mules, packers, cooks, and the like. As photographer of these outings, in the late 1920s, Adams began to realize that he could earn enough to survive — indeed, that he was far more likely to prosper as a photographer than as a concert pianist. By 1934 Adams had been elected to the club’s board of directors and was well established as both the artist of the Sierra Nevada and the defender of Yosemite.

Nineteen twenty seven was the pivotal year of Adams’s life. He made his first fully visualized photograph, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, and took his first High Trip. More important, he came under the influence of Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and patron of arts and artists. Literally the day after they met, Bender set in motion the preparation and publication of Adams’ first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras [sic]. Bender’s friendship, encouragement, and tactful financial support changed Adams’s life dramatically. His creative energies and abilities as a photographer blossomed, and he began to have the confidence and wherewithal to pursue his dreams. Indeed, Bender’s benwgn patronage triggered the transformation of a journeyman concert pianist into the artist whose photographs, as critic Abigail Foerstner wrote in the Chicago

14 | 1920’s Photographs

Tribune (Dec. 3, 1992), “did for the national parks something comparable to what Homer’s epics did for Odysseus.” Between 1929 and 1942, Adams’s matured and excelled in his work to become more established. In the 1930s Adams produced and experimented with his works the most. His works included everything from detailed closeups, mountains to factories. In 1930 Adams’ second portfolio ‘Taos Pueblo’ was published (accompanied by text) by writer Mary Hunter Austin. Adams got introduced to Stieglitz’s circle in New Mexico which included painter Georgia O’Keeffe, artist John Marin, and photographer Paul Strand, all of whom created famous works during their stays in the Southwest. Adams was a great talker which combined with his excellent piano playing skills to make him earn great many elite friends.

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