Ansel Adams and Edward Burtynsky: Environment

Edward Burtynsky Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one f eels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” The focus of my personal study will be to compare the work of photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Burtynsky and how Adam’s work does not include any man-made objects and his photographs are considered to be ‘pure’, whereas Burtynsky’s work consists of industrial landscapes and objects.

Though the content

of the work is the same, these two artists have very different approaches to documenting the landscape. By making comparisons, I hope to understand Adam’s and Burtynsky’s intent and discuss which approach is most successful.

“A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words”.

-Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist known for his black and white images of the American West, who was considered to be the most important landscape photographer of the 20th century. He is considered to be the most widely known and beloved photographer in the history of the United States and his work has become more popular since his death in 1984. His most important work was devoted to what appeared to be the country’s remaining fragments of untouched wilderness which was especially found in national parks and other protected areas of the American West.

Also, Adams’ helped found group f/64 which was an association of photographers who were advocating ‘pure’ photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph.

In Adams’ photograph of Mount Williamson, there are multiple forms of composition techniques which have been used in the image such as the rule of thirds, contrast, pattern, repetition, and differential and selective focus. The rule of thirds has been used in this image by splitting it into three parts with the top being the mountains and clouds, the middle being the smaller boulders and the bottom being the larger boulders. Using the rule of thirds creates structure for the image by separating it into different sections.

Contrast has been used in the image by highlighting the dark and light parts of the image and this effects the image by adding shadows.

There is different patterns in the image that are created by the boulders because they all have an individual size which makes them all look like circles. In the image there is also repetition of the small and large boulders.

As well as that, differential and selective focus has been used to highlight the boulders as your first point to look at and then guides your attention to the mountain and clouds in the distance with the different shadows and light that have been used on them.

The content in the image consists of a landscape which contains thousands of small and large boulders with an array of mountains and clouds in the background.

The light and shadows used in the background could suggest that they are highlighting the different parts of the mountains to show how significant they are in the picture. It is also a very typical landscape image because it contains all the basic compositional components.

This photograph was made by Adams with a large 8x10 view camera while he was standing on a roof top platform on his station wagon. This view allowed him to look over the boulders to the distant mountain range. He pointed the camera down and titled the back down to keep the rocks near and far mountains in sharp focus, setting up a composition with both near and far elements. He moved his car several times to position the camera for the composition that he desired. When developing the image, Adams used the darkroom and the zonal system which was formulated by Adams and Fred Archer and it’s an approach to a standardised way of working that guarantees a correct exposure in every situation.

The system divides a scene into 10 zones on the tonal scale. The zonal system is good because it captures the correct exposure, has a precise evaluation of the scene’s tones and dynamic range and it determines the situations where you need to use a fill flash to get a correct exposure.

Adams used the zonal system to calculate the tonal range and he exposed the image to hold detail in both the dark rocks and the brightly lit clouds in the final gelatin siler print. The exposure Ansel used was 1/10 second at f/32. He also developed the photograph using a water-bath which strengthens the shadow area contrasts.

Also, Ansel was a member of the group f/64 which was a group devoted to exhibiting and promoting a new direction in photography that broke with the pictorialism then prevalent in West Coast art photography. The name of the group referred to the smallest aperture available in large format view cameras at the time and it signalled the group’s conviction that photographs should celebrate rather than disguise the medium’s unrivalled capacity to present the world “as it is”.

The group’s effort to present the camera’s “vision” as clearly as possible included advocating the use of aperture f/64 in order to provide the greatest depth of filed, allowing for the largest percentage of the picture to be in sharp focus e.g., contact printing which is a method of making prints by placing photographic paper directly in contact with the negative, instead of using an enlarger to project the negative image onto the paper, and glossy papers instead of matte, the surfaces of which tended to disperse the contours of objects. The group’s photographers concentrated on landscape photography such as Adams where close up images of items from the natural environment, such as plants and pieces of wood, subjects that highlighted the photographer’s creative intuition and ability to create aesthetic order out of nature’s chaos.

The mood this image gives is sad but also quite calming and peaceful. This is because the grey and dark tones of the image make the image look sad.

However, the photograph has shadows and light reflecting onto the dark and grey tones which also creates quite a peaceful and calming atmosphere because the nature of the picture looks like it’s a quiet setting which could be relaxing.

This photograph was taken when Adams made several trips in 1943 and 1944, from Yosemite to the Manazanar Kelocation center, located at the foot of Mount Williamson which was where Japanese and Japanese-American citizens were interned after the attack on Pearl Harbour. On one of his trips to the Manazanar camp he made what he considered to be one of his best images, a view of a vast field of boulders with Mount Williamson in the distance surrounded by dramatic clouds. Adams was an activist for wilderness and the environment, and his influence came from his photographs as people usually envisioned them when they thought about the national parks of the Sierra Club or nature of the environment. This is because his black and white images were not ‘realistic’ documents of nature but they sought an intensification and the purification of the psychological experience of natural beauty.

“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

- Ansel Adams

Edward Burtynsky

“The concept of the landscape as architecture has become, for me, an act of imagination”.

-Edward Burtynsky

The composition techniques used in this photograph are repetition of the different stones and the pattern that they make.

Also, the use of corners shown in this photograph is shown when all the stones are connected to one and it shows that even though all of the stones are unique in their size they do eventually connect together as one.

As well as that the photograph can be split into three using the rule of thirds with the left side with just the stones, the middle with stones and some construction elements and the right with just stones.

Rule Of thirds

Also, the picture was taken at a high vantage point which shows the detail and perspective of the photograph better.

The image consists of a large landscape with different sized stones that eventually connect together to join into the middle. It also contains elements of construction on the quarry which shows that Burtynsky likes to include man-made objects into his photographs as well as the natural environment.

As well as that the construction in the photograph shows that Burtynsky’s work is different to Adams’ work even though they both photograph the environment. This is because Adams’ photographs are considered to be ‘pure’ and have only natural elements included, whereas Burtynsky includes manmade objects into his images which would mean that they would not be considered to be ‘pure’ photographs. However, there is a truthfulness about these photographs because it shows the potential dangers for the workers on the quarries. This is because we see from the perspective the photograph was taken that it was very high which is very dangerous on the uneven and repeating layers of the stone which has been documented by Burtynsky with the equipment they left.

“Often my approach, the compression of space through light and optics, also yields an ambiguity of scale”. Burtynsky made a half dozen Vermont trips to photograph what are thought to be the deepest quarries in the world.

“Photographing quarries was a deliberate act of going out to try to find something in the world that would match the kinds of forms in my imagination” “I was excited by the striking patinas on the walls of the abandoned quarries. The surface of the rock-face would simultaneously reveal the process of its own creation, as well as display the techniques of the quarrymen. I likened the tenacious trees and pools of water to nature's sentinels awaiting the eventual retreat of man and machine - to begin the slow process of reclamation”.

The mood this photograph gives is that it could look quite scar y to people because you can see that the construction is near the edge of the quarry above the water whic h could be potentially very dangerous if there was anyone working on it. As well as that it looks quite scary from the angle the photograph was taken because it is a high vantage point and perspective which could make everything look higher than It actually is.

Burtynsky got into Barre for the first time in 1991 as a result of a photographic quest for quarries in Northern Ontario. When he expressed his disappointment with the small scale of operations in Temagami, a quarryman there described a series of spectacular quarries he’d seen in Vermont.

He packed his gear and began the long drive southeast to Barre. It was a trip that launched his career. For Burtynsky, it suggested inverted architecture: an idea about quarries that he had long dreamed of, but in the eyes of the quarryman it was an evolutionary history of extraction technology.

“These landscapes aren’t breaking news or necessarily even illegal. These are intentional, purposeful landscapes, whether to extend our cities or build a mine or put a road in or clear a forest.

I’ve been photographing that which has been intended by us; it’s not an accident.”

-Edward Burtynsky

In conclusion, I have discovered that there are some differences between Adams’ and Burtynsky’s work such as the scenes they take photographs of because Adams’ focuses on what is considered ‘pure’ photography where the scene hasn’t been touched by anyone so its natural and ‘pure’. Whereas Burtynsky’s photographs are often scenes that show life has been there and man-made objects have been added.

However, there are some similarities ,in their work because

their

photographs are very typical landscape images as they consist of all the basic composition techniques. As well as that my research shows how the process within the images, they create is a massive part of their work. For example, Burtynsky takes large scale photographs of scenes that have been explored by humans and Adams’ created a zonal system for the process of his photographs so that he could get the exposure of the photograph correct every time. Finally, I have found that from learning about Burtynsky and Adams how through the use of technology, the way artists document our landscape has changed forever.

Bibliography Secondary Sources: Books: Ansel Adams, an autobiography- Ansel Adams The Camera- Ansel Adams Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements by William A.Ewing Websites: Details - Mount Williamson (housatonic.edu) Ansel Adams, Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, 1944 – Land and Lens (middlebury.edu) https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/quarries Understanding & Using Ansel Adam's Zone System (tutsplus.com) Group f/64 | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (metmuseum.org) Ansel Adams - Wikipedia https://www.anseladams.com/ Sources Of Quotations: Ansel Adams Quotes (Author of The Camera) (goodreads.com) https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/edward-burtynsky-quotes Acknowledgements: Laura Watt Word Count: 2118 (not including bibliography)