Ansel Adams Helmund Newton Edward Weston photography by Paweł Hęciak

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Ansel Adams Tetons and the Snake River

Ansel Adams, Photographer By William Turnage

This biography has been published by Oxford University Press for its American National Biography and is reprinted courtesy OUP and the author.

Adams, Ansel (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of 1907, and Adams’s father spent the rest of his life doggedly but fruitlessly attempting to recoup.

Ansel

An only child, Adams was born when his mother was nearly forty. His relatively elderly parents, affluent family history, and the live-in presence of his mother’s maiden sister and aged father all combined to create an environment that was decidedly Victorian and both socially and emotionally conservative. Adams’s mother spent much of her time brooding and fretting over her husband’s inability to restore the Adams fortune, leaving an ambivalent imprint on her son. Charles Adams, on the other hand, deeply and patiently influenced, encouraged, and supported his son. Natural shyness and a certain intensity of genius, coupled with the dramatically earthquaked” nose, caused Adams to have problems fitting in at school. In later life he noted that he might have been diagnosed as hyperactive. There is also the distinct possibility that he may have suffered from dyslexia. He was not successful in the various schools to which his parents sent him; consequently, his father and aunt tutored him at home. Ultima-

Original signed Ansel Adams gelatin silver photograph Image Date: 1942 Print Date: 1970 Signed: "Ansel Adams” Print Size: 16” x 20” Approximate Image Size Print Condition: Excellent Includes Certificate of Authenticity from The Ansel Adams Gallery

tely, he managed to earn what he termed a legitimizing diploma” from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School perhaps equivalent to having completed the eighth grade. The most important result of Adams’s somewhat solitary and unmistakably different childhood was the joy that he found in nature, as evidenced by his taking long walks in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate. Nearly every day found him hiking the dunes or meandering along Lobos Creek, down to Baker Beach, or out to the very edge of the American continent. When Adams was twelve he taught himself to play the piano and read music. Soon he was taking lessons, and the ardent pursuit of music became his substitute for formal schooling. For the next dozen years the piano was Adams’s primary occupation and, by 1920, his intended profession. Although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano brought substance, discipline, and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography. If Adams’s love of nature was nurtured in the Golden Gate, his life was, in his words, coloA

Ansel Adams - Mountains in the clouds

wrote in the Chicago Tribune (Dec. 3, 1992), did for the national parks something comparable to what Homer’s epics did for Odysseus.” Although Adams’s transition from musician to photographer did not happen at once, his passion shifted rapidly after Bender came into his life, and the projects and possibilities multiplied. In addition to spending summers photographing in the Sierra Nevada, Adams made several lengthy trips to the Southwest to work with Mary Austin, grande dame of the western literati. Their magnificent limited edition book, Taos Pueblo, was published in 1930. In the same year Adams met photographer Paul Strand, whose images had a powerful impact on Adams and helped to move him away from the pictorial” style he had favored in the 1920s. Adams began to pursue straight photography,” in which the clarity of the lens was emphasized, and the final print gave no appearance of being manipulated in the camera or the darkroom. Adams was soon to become straight photography’s mast articulate and insistent champion. [Ed. Note: Manipulated in this instance meaning altering the clarity or content of the photographed subject matter. Techniques such as burning” and dodging”, as well as the Zone System, a scientific system developed by Adams, is used specifically to manipulate” the tonality and give the artist the ability to create as opposed to record.] In 1927 Adams met photographer Edward Weston. They became increasingly important to each other as friends and colleagues. The renowned Group f/64, founded in 1932, coalesced around the recognized greatness of Weston and the dynamic energy of Adams. Although loosely organized and relatively short-lived, Group f/64 brought the new West Coast vision of straight photography to national attention and influence. San red 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. 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 Sierr in the late 1920s, Adams began to realize that he co6

Ansel

uld 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 benign patronage triggered the transformation of a journeyman concert pianist into the artist whose photographs, as critic Abigail Foerstner

Original signed Ansel Adams gelatin silver photograph Image Date: 19 Signed: "Ansel Adams”" Print Size: Print Condition: Excellent Includes Certificate of Authenticity from The Ansel Adams Gallery

Francisco’s DeYoung Museum promptly gave

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an exhibition and, in that same year, gave Adams his first one-man museum show.

Adams’s star rose rapidly in the early 1930s, propelled in part by his ability and in part by his effusive energy and activity. He made his first visit to New York in 1933, on a pilgrimage to meet photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the artist whose work and philosophy Adams most admired and whose life of commitment to the medium he consciously emulated. Their relationship was intense and their correspondence frequent, rich, and insightful. Although pro foundly a man of the West, Adams spent a considerable amount of time in New York during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Stieglitz circle played a vital role in his artistic life. In 1933 the Delphic Gallery gave Adams his first New York show. His first series of technical articles was published in Camera Craft in 1934, and his first widely distributed book, Making a Photograph, appeared in 1935. Most important, in 1936 Stieglitz gave Adams a one-man show at An American Place. Recognition, however, did not alleviate Adams’s financial pressures. In a letter dated 6 August A

Ansel Adams - Yellowstone

1935 he wrote Weston, I have been busy, but broke. Can’t seem to climb over the financial fence.” Adams was compelled to spend much of his time as a commercial photographer. Clients ran the gamut, including the Yosemite concessionaire, the National Park Service, Kodak, Zeiss, IBM, AT&T, a small women’s college, a dried fruit company, and Life, Fortune, and Arizona Highways magazines in short, everything from portraits to catalogues to Coloramas. On 2 July 1938 he wrote to friend David McAlpin, I have to do something in the relatively near future to regain the right track in photography. I am literally swamped with commercial” work necessary for practical reasons, but very restraining to my creative work.” Although Adams became an unusually skilled commercial photographer, the work was intermittent, and he constantly worried about paying the next month’s bills. His financial situation remained precarious and a source of considerable stress until late in life. Adams’s technical mastery was the stuff of legend. More than any creative photographer, before or since, he reveled in the theory and practice of the medium. Weston and Strand frequently consulted him for technical advice. He served as principal photographic consultant to Polaroid and Hasselblad and, informally, to many other photographic concerns. Adams developed the famous and highly complex zone system” of controlling and relating exposure and development, enabling photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization. He produced ten volumes of technical manuals on photography, which are the most influential books ever written on the subject. Adams’s energy and capacity for work were simply colossal. He often labored for eighteen or more hours per day, for days and weeks on end. There were no vacations, no holidays, no Sundays in Ansel Adams’s life. Frequently, after and intense period of work, he would return to San Francisco or Yosemite, promptly contract the flu,” and spend several days in bed. His hyper-kinetic existence was also fueled by alcohol, for which he had a particular fondness, and a constant whirl of social activity, friends, and colleagues. As Beaumont Newhall writes in his FOCUS: Memoirs of a Life in Photography (1993), Ansel was a great party man and loved to entertain. He had a very dominating personality, and would always be the center of attention” (p. 235). Adams described himself as a photographer lecturer writer. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that he was simply indeed, compulsively a communicator. He endlessly traveled the country in pursuit of both the natural beauty he revered and photographed and the audiences he required. Adams felt an intense commitment to promoting photography as a fine art and played a key role in the establishment of the first museum department of photography, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work at the museum fostered the closest relationships of Adams’s life, 8

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with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, a historian and museum administrator and a writer-designer, respectively. Their partnership was arguably the most potent collaboration in twentieth-century photography. In the 1950s and 1960s Nancy Newhall and Adams created a number of books and exhibitions of historic significance, particularly the Sierra Club’s This is the American Earth (1960), which, with Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring, played a seminal role in launching the first broad-based citizen environmental movement. Adams was an unremitting activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. Over the years he attended innumerable meetings and wrote thousands of letters in support of his conservation philosophy to newspaper editors, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society colleagues,

government bureaucrats, and politicians. However, his great influence came from his photography. His images became the symbols, the veritable icons, of wild America. When people thought about the national parks of the Sierra Club or nature of the environment itself, the often envisioned them in terms of an Ansel Adams photograph. His black-and-white images were not realistic” documents of nature. Instead, they sought an intensification and purification of the psychological experience of natural beauty. He created a sense of the sublime magnificence of nature that infused the viewer with the emotional equivalent of wilderness, often more powerful than the actual thing. For Adams, the environmental issues of particular importance were Yosemite National Park, the national park system, and above

all, the preservation of wilderness. He focused on what he termed the spiritual-emotional aspects of parks and wilderness and relentlessly resisted the Park Service’s resortism,” which had led to the over development of the national parks and their domination by private concessionaires. But the range of issues in which Adams involved himself was encyclopedic. He fought for new parks and wilderness areas, for the Wilderness Act, for wild Alaska and his beloved Big Sur coast of central California, for the mighty redwoods, for endangered sea lions and sea otters, and for clean air and water. An advocate of balanced, restrained use of resources, Adams also fought relentlessly against overbuilt highways, billboards, and all manner of environmental mendacity and shortsightedness. Yet he invariably treated his opponents with respect and courtesy. A

Ansel Adams - Lake MacDonald, Glacier National Park, 1942

As John Swarkowski states in the introduction to Adams’s Classic Images (1985), The love that Americans poured out for the work and person of Ansel Adams during his old age, and that they have continued to express with undiminished enthusiasm since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country’s response to a visual artist” (p. 5). Why should this be so? What generated this remarkable response? Adams’s subject matter, the magnificent natural beauty of the West, was absolutely, unmistakably American, and his chosen instrument, the camera, was a quintessential artifact of the twentieth-century culture. He was blessed with an unusually generous, charismatic personality, and his great faith in people and human nature was amply rewarded. Adams channeled his energies in ways that served his fellow citizens, personified in his lifelong effort to preserve the American wilderness. Above all, Adams’s philosophy and optimism struck a chord in the national phsyche. More than any other influential American of his epoch, Adams believed in both the possibility and the probability of humankind living in harmony and balance with its environment. It is difficult to imagine Ansel Adams occurring in a European country or culture and equally difficult to conjure an artist more completely American, either in art of personality.

Though wilderness and the environment were his grand passions, photography was his calling, his metier, his raison d’etre. Adams never made a creative photograph specifically for environmental purposes. On 12 April 1977 he wrote to his publisher, Tim Hill, I know I shall be castigated by a large group of people today, but I was trained to assume that art related to the elusive quality of beauty and that the purpose of art was concerned with the elevation of the spirit (horrible Victorian notion!!)” Adams was often criticized for failing to include humans or evidence of humanity” in his landscape photographs. The great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson made the well-known comment that the world is falling to pieces and all Adams and Weston photograph is rocks and trees” (quoted by Adams, Oral History, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, p. 498). Reviewers frequently characterize Adams as a photographer of an idealized wilderness that no longer exists. On the contrary, the places that Adams photographed are, with few exceptions, precisely those wilderness and park areas that

Ansel

have been preserved for all time. There is a vast amount of true and truly protected wilderness in America, much of it saved because of the efforts of Adams and his colleagues. Seen in a more traditional art history context, Adams was the last and defining figure in the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century American landscape painting and photography. Adams always claimed he was not influenced,” but, consciously or unconsciously, he was firmly in the tradition of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Carlton Watkins, and Eadweard Muybridge. And he was the direct philosophical heir of the American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir. He grew up in a time and place where his zeitgeist was formed by the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and muscular” Americanism, by the pervading sense of manifest destiny, and the notion that European civilization was being reinvented much for the better in the new nation and, particularly, in the new West. Adams died in Monterey, California.

Adams’s vast archive of papers, memorabilia, correspondence, negatives, and many fine” photographic prints, as well as numerous work” or proof prints, are in the John P. Schaefer Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson. A portion of his papers relating to the Sierra Club are in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Adams’s Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985) was unfinished at the time of his death and was subsequently completed by Mary Street Alinder, his editor. An Autobiography offers a somewhat rose-colored and selective view of Adams’s life. A selection of correspondence, Letters and Images (1988), contains a small but interesting fraction of the estimated 100,000 letters and cards that Adams wrote during his lifetime. He wrote and contributed photographs to hundreds of articles and reviews from 1922 until 1984. He published eight portfolios of original photographic prints (1927, 1948, 1950, 1960, 1963, 1970, 1974, 1976). Nearly four dozen books bear Adams’s name as author and/or artist. Those not mentioned in this article include Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (1938); Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley (1941); Born Free and Equal (1944); Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (1946); Camera and Lens (1948); The Negative (1948); Yosemite and the High Sierra (1948); The Print (1950); My Camera in Yosemite Valley (1950); My Camera in the National Parks (1950); The Land of Little Rain (1950, new ed. with Adam-

s’s photographs); Natural Light Photography (1952); Death Valley (1954); Mission San Xavier del Bac (1954); The Pageant of History in Northern California (1954); Artificial Light Photography (1956); The Islands of Hawaii (1958); Yosemite Valley (1959); Death Valley and the Creek Called Furnace (1962); These We Inherit: The Parklands of America (1962); Polaroid Land Photography Manual (1963); An Introduction to Hawaii (1964); Fiat Lux: The University of California (1967); The Tetons and the Yellowstone (1970); Ansel Adams (1972); Singular Images (1974); Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974 (1974); Photographs of the Southwest (1976); The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (1977); Polaroid Land Photography (1978); Yosemite and the Range of Light (1979); a new technical series, including The Camera (1980), The Negative (1981), and The Print (1983); Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (1983); and, posthumously, Andrea G. Stillman, ed., The American Wilderness (1990); Stillman and William A. Turnage, eds. Our National Parks (1992); Harry Callahan, ed., Ansel Adams in Color (1993); and Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1994). More than a decade after his death, there was still no biography covering his entire life. Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light (1963), is a relatively short and adoring biography of Adams’s first thirty-six years, written with zest and insight, as well as Adams’s full collaboration.

— William A. Turnage

999 Half Dome, Merced, Winter, Yosemite National Park, California 1938 Ansel Adams (Stany Zjednoczone) 19021984 Podczas swojej długiej i płodnej kariery, Ansel Adams stworzył szereg prac, które stały się nie tylko przykładem czystego podejścia do medium, ale dla wielu ludzi ostateczną, zobrazowaną wypowiedzią na temat krajobrazów zachodniej Ameryki. Łączy się go również z wizyjnym zmysłem piękna pustkowi i znaczeniem ich ochrony. Prestiż i popularność jego prac zwiększa niezwykła precyzja techniczna fotografii oraz utrzymywanie absolutnej kontroli nad procesami fotograficznymi. Ansel Adams urodził się w San Francisco. Początkowo interesował się muzyką i grą na pianinie, z czym wiązał przyszłą zawodową karierę. Jednak w 1916 roku po wykonaniu swoich pierwszych zdjęć w Yosemite Valley (Doliną Yosemite) przeżycia stamtąd wyniesione były tak intensywne, że stały się inspiracją na całe życie. Studiował fotografię z a photofinisher, tworząc wczesne prace pod wpływem panującego stylu piktorialnego. Każdego lata wyjeżdżał do Yosemite, gdzie rozwijał swoje zainteresowania ochroną naturalnego piękna tego miejsca. Wyjazdy do Yosemite wiązały ze sobą obserwację, 12

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wspinaczkę oraz fotografowaniem w roku 1920 dały wyraz związaniem się z the Sierra Club. W 1927 opublikowano jego pierwsze portfolio Parmelian Prints of th High Sierras. W 1928 ożenił się z Viktorią Best i rozpoczął pracę jako oficjalny fotograf Sierra Club. Wpływ na jego decyzję związania życia z fotografią miała znajomość z Paul’em Strand’em, które poznał w 1930 roku.

roku. Stieglietz był pod ogromnym wrażeniem prac Adamsa i zorganizował mu wystawę indywidualną. Jej tytuł to An American Place (1936). W ciągu następnych dwóch lat Adams przeniósł się do Yosemite. Wraz z Weston’em, Gerorgią O’Keeffe i Davidem McAlpin’em odbył podróże wzdłuż i wszerz południowego-zachodu Ameryki. W 1938 jego fotografie towarzyszyły publikacji o Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. W 1939 roku, w Nowym Jorku, poznał Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. W kolejnym roku, wraz z McAlpin’em, asystował przy założeniu Departamentu Fotografii w Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej (the Museum of Modern Art. - MoMA). Wraz z rozpoczęciem II wojny światowej przeniósł się do Waszyngtonu, gdzie pracował jako photomuralist w Departamencie Wewnętrznym. W tym czasie rozpoczął pracę nad usystematyzowaniem swoich obserwacji związanych z ekspozycją, procesami fotograficznymi oraz wykonywaniem odbitek, czyli nad wielkim wkładem w dziedzinie fotografii, systemem strefowym. Ostatecznie system miał na celu prewizualizację końcowego efektu dzięki kontrolowaniu panujących warunków fotografowanego obiektu. Prace z czasów wojennych będące fotograficznym esejem na temat sytuacji internowanych amerykańskich Japończyków zostały wystawione w MoMA w 1944 pt. Born Free and Equal (Urodzony Wolny i Równy). W latach 1944-1945 Adams wykładał i uczył fotografii podczas zajęć w muzeum. Zajęcia były bezpośrednim powodem stworzenia w 1946 roku pierwszego wydziału fotografii w the California School of Fine Arts (później przemianowanej na the San Francisco Institute). Po otrzymaniu w 1948 roku odznaczenia od Guggenheim Fellowship za fotografie krajobrazów i pomników przyrody parków narodowych, dla Adamsa rozpoczął się bardzo kreatywny

okres (ok. 5 lat). Pierwszym portfolio z tego okresu było In Memory of Alfred Stieglitz (Pamięci Alfreda Stieglitza), które ukazało się w 1948 roku. W tym samym roku Adams rozpoczął publikację cyklu wydawnictw dotyczących podstaw fotografii - Basic Photo Series. W roku 1950 odbył podróże na Hawaje, Alaskę i Men. W tym też roku ukazało się kolejne portfolio The National Parks and Monuments (Parki Narodowe i Pomniki). W 1953 współpracował z Dorothea Lange nad zleceniem tygodnika Life dotyczącym fotograficznego eseju na temat Mormonów z Utah. W 1955 rozpoczął kolejną pracę nad fotografiami w Yosemite, uwieńczoną publikacją portfolio (1960), wspartą przez the Sierra Club, pt. Yosemite Valley (Dolina Yosemite). W każdym ze swoich obrazów Adams miał na celu takie modulowanie pełną skalą tonów, od głębokiej czerni po czystą biel, aby osiągnąć perfekcyjną przejrzystość fotografii. Rozwinął mistrzowsko wiedzę na temat technicznej reprodukcji obrazu, która dawała idealną wierność względem kopiowanego oryginału. W 1962 roku Adams przeprowadził się do Carmel w Kalifornii, gdzie w 1967 roku he was instrumental w fundacji Photography Fellowship (Towarzystwa Fotografii), której został przewodniczącym. Retrospektywna wystawa prac Adamsa z lat 1923-63 (jeszcze za życia fotografa) została zorganizowana w the de Young Museum. W roku 1966 został wybrany na członka Amerykańskiej Akademii Sztuki i Nauki. W późnych latach 70-tych fotografie Adamsa, sprzedawane kolekcjonerom, osiągały ceny niespotykane wśród żyjących fotografów amerykańskich. W tym czasie Adams zaprzestał aktywnej działalności fotograficznej by poświęcić się korekcji cyklu Basic Photo Series, publikowaniu książek o swojej życiowej twórczości i przygotowywaniu odbitek na szereg wystaw.

Pierwszy indywidualny pokaz prac Adamsa miał miejsce w 1931 w M.M. de Young Memorial Museum. W tym samym roku prace zostały wystawione w the Smithsomian Institution. W następnym roku Adams oraz inni, głównie kalifornijscy fotografowie, m.in. Edward Weston i Imogen Cunnigham założyli grupę fotograficzną f/64. Dla Adams’a, a w szczególności Weston’a, urzeczywistnienie filozofii f/64 wiązało się z realizacją perfekcyjnych wizji fotograficznych przez techniczną nieskazitelność wykonywanych odbitek. Mimo tego Adams nigdy nie zaprzestał eksperymentować zarówno z kamerami wielkoformatowymi, jak i miniaturkami. Po spotkaniu w 1933 Alfreda Stieglitz’a Adams założył galerię w San Francisco - The Ansel Adams Gallery. Jego pierwsza książka współtworzona wraz z mistrzami fotografii pt. Making a Photograph, została opublikowana w 1935 A

Edward Weston

Edward Weston Biography Edward Henry Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Chicago where he attended Oakland Grammar School. He began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets and funerals. Realizing the need for formal training, in 1908 Weston returned east and attended the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois. He completed the 12-month course in six months and returned to California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing.) Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler (1910), Theodore Brett (1911), Laurence Neil (1916) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons

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and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. Weston also authored many articles himself for many of these publications. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.” Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his "Daybooks.” They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s. In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and sharper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality. Weston later wrote, “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whe-

ther it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Weston also traveled to New York City this same year, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe. In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. It was also here that famous artists; Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco hailed Weston as the master of 20th century art. After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California. Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that A

aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936. Following the receipt of this fellowship Weston spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson. Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and in 1948 shot his last photograph of Point Lobos. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art, New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. Over the next 10 years of progressively incapacitating illness, Weston supervised the prin-

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ting of his prints by his sons, Brett and Cole. His 50th Anniversary Portfolio was published in 1952 with photographs printed by Brett. An even larger printing project took place between1952 and 1955. Brett printed what was known as the Project Prints. A series of 8 -10 prints from 832 negatives considered Edward’s lifetime best. The Smithsonian Institution held the show, “The World of Edward Weston” in 1956 paying tribute to his remarkable accomplishments in American photography. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, California. Weston’s ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos.

Edward Weston (ur. 24 marca 1886, zm. 1 stycznia 1958) – uważany za najbardziej wpływowego amerykańskiego fotografa swoich czasów.

Swoją przygodę z fotografią rozpoczął w 1902 roku, sam nauczył się podstaw fotografii i zaczął jeździć po kraju wykonując zdjęcia portretowe. W 1908 roku rozpoczął naukę w Illinois Collage of Photography. Swoje własne studio założył w 1911 roku w Tropoico w Kaliforni. W ówczesnym czasie zyskuje coraz większe uznanie, jego fotografie wystawiane są na licznych wystawach a artykuły publikowane w takich czasopismach jak: American Photography, Photo Era. W tym okresie jego zdjęcia charakteryzował styl typowy dla piktorialistów.

W 1922 roku nastąpił punkt zwrotny w karierze Westona. Porzucił swój dotychczasowy styl a jego fotografie stały się bardziej skupione na detalu oraz formie. „Miękkie”, zamglone obrazy zastąpił niezwykle precyzyjnymi i „ostrymi” fotografiami. Wykonywał zdjęcia zakładów przemysłowych oraz zainteresował się konstrukcjami. W 1922 roku podczas pobytu u siostry mieszkającej w Middletown w stanie Ohio, 18

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zrobił pierwsze zdjęcia przemysłowe na których prezentował Hutę Stali w Armco. W 1923 roku wyjeżdża do Meksyku gdzie zakłada studio fotograficzne wraz z Tiną Modotti. W tym okresie powstaje wiele ważnych w jego twórczości portretów i aktów. Ideą fotografii aktu Westona nie było wzbudzanie pożądania czy ukazanie seksualności poprzez nagość ale potraktowanie ciała jako tworzywa rzeźbiarskiego, wydobywając z niego piękno osiągane poprzez światło i cień. Fotografie aktów charakteryzowały się subtelnym oraz perfekcyjnym ujęciem ciała ludzkiego. Jego twórczość w tej dziedzinie podzielona została na dwa etapy:

- do połowy lat 30’ gdzie ciało wyraża abstrakcyjny obraz a tożsamość modelki pozostaje w ukryciu, - od połowy lat 30’ gdy na zdjęciach pojawiają się twarze modelek a ich tożsamość nabiera znaczenia.

Edward Weston lubił też fotografować obiekty, będące dziełem natury – elementy pejzażu, warzywa, rośliny. Jego zdjęcia martwej natury zyskały ogromną sławę a nowatorskie podejście do sposobu ich przedstawiania, wywarły duży wpływ na późniejszą fotografię. Fotografowanie pojedynczych obiektów, pozbawionych otoczenia, miało uwypuklić ich doskonałość oraz prostotę. W zdjęciach Westona przestaje mieć znaczenie przedmiot- ważne jest by fotografia pokazywała jego piękno. W swoich pracach artysta starał się zgłębić erotyczną tajemnicę, co obecne jest nawet w fotografiach martwej natury, które nieprzypadkowo budzą erotyczne skojarzenia.

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W zdjęciach krajobrazu Watson poszukiwał symetrii oraz starał się uwydatnić geometryczne kształty. Swoje mistrzostwo pokazał na fotografiach rezerwatu w Point Lobos. W 1932 roku Edward Weston wraz z Anselem Adamsem i innymi fotografami, założył grupę „f/64″, która odegrała ważną rolę w promowaniu „fotografii bezpośredniej”. W 1937 i 1938 r jako pierwszy z fotografów otrzymuje stypendium Guggenheima. Swoje ostatnie zdjęcie zrobił w 1948 roku kiedy to choroba Parkinsona uniemożliwiła mu dalszą pracę.

Helmut Newton dla Paris Match, Monte Carlo, 1985

Helmud Newton The Polaroids

Helmut Newton (1920-2004)

Słynny, a przede wszystkim kontrowersyjny fotograf. Urodził się w 1920 roku w Niemczech w bogatej rodzinie żydowskiej. Już w młodości pobierał naukę fotografii pod okiem Elsy Simon. W 1938 roku, w przeddzień II wojny światowej, wyemigrował do Singapuru, gdzie - jak sam później przyznał - został żigolakiem. Pracował również dla lokalnej gazety. W 1940 roku opuścił Singapur i udał się do Australii. Wpierw trafił do obozu jenieckiego (posługiwał się nieważnym paszportem), a następnie odbył służbę wojskową. Po zakończeniu wojny otworzył w Melbourne niewielkie studio i poślubił aktorkę June Brunell, która miała ogromny wpływ na jego twórczość. W latach pięćdziesiątych osiadł w Paryżu, a następnie w Stanach 22

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Zjednoczonych. Rozpoczął współpracę z wpływowymi w świecie mody i polityki magazynami, takimi jak „Vouge”, „Elle”, „Stern” czy „Playboy”, zdobywając powoli rozgłos i uznanie. Podstawowym tematem jego prac było nagie ciało kobiety - fotografowane w najrozmaitszych pozach, umieszczane w nierzadko szokujących kontekstach (m.in. fetyszyzm, masochizm, przemoc). Fotografie Newtona były wielokrotnie wydawane w postaci albumów, z których warto wymienić White Woman, Big Nudes, Private Property i Sumo. Newton zginął w wypadku samochodowym w 2004 roku.

Helmut Newton dla Thierry Mugler, Monte Carlo, 1998, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 24

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Helmut Newton was born Helmut Neustaedter, in Berlin, Germany in 1920. His early studies were at the American School in Berlin. Newton was a very bad student and left school in 1936. Newton by then, was already fascinated with photography and entered an apprenticeship with then renowned photographer Elsie Simon,known as Yva, in 1936. Yva had a great influence in Newton’s later work. She was known for her elegant fashion photographs, nudes, and portraits of dancers. Newton also had great admiration for the work of Brassai, who exerted great influence on his future night pictures. In 1938, Newton’s parents secured him a passage on a ship to China, fleeing Hitler’s vicious campaign against German Jews. Newton stopped in Singapore where he stayed until 1940; he then moved to Australia. Newton later joined the Australian army, serving five years.

In 1948, Newton married actress June Brunell, a fellow photographer who later would photograph Newton and work with him on his books. Brunell remained his partner for more than 55 years until his death. During this time, he changed his name to Newton, and opened a small photo studio in Melbourne. He was hired by Australian[I] Vogue [/I]in the 1950s; by British [I] Vogue [/I]in 1957-1958, and by French [I] Vogue [/I]in 1961; a magazine that he stam-

ped with his trademark images for a quarter century. Throughout the years, Newton contributed to magazines such as [I]Playboy, Queen, Nova, Marie-Claire, Elle [/I]and the American, Italian, and German editions of Vogue. After a nearly fatal heart-attack in 1971, and with the encouragement of his wife, he began to photograph overtly sexual images. The cool statuesque, and sexually practiced women in Newton’s fashion and personal photoraphs were his most controversial creation. His photographs featured vignettes he staged, often of fraught moments heavy with overtones of voyeurism, fetishism, lesbianism, and sado-masochism, his women outraged somefeminist viewers and satisfied others. His dramas stopped short of pornography, and most took place in European jet-set retreats. Dense form of black lignite coal obtained from decomposed driftwood found in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast of England. Jet has been known since Roman times, but it did not become popular until the 19th century, when it was associated with mourning jewelry. It was most fashionable in the 1870s and 1880s at which time it was made into lockets, pendants, brooches, and bracelets, elaborately cut into fruit, flower, and animal designs. jet -set retreats. His black-and-white photographs combine

Helmut Newton dla Focus Magazine, Mediolan, 1997, Staatliche A n s e Museen l AzudBerlin a m

Newton challenged conventions, and created a provocative, hybrid photography that embraced fashion, erotica, portrait, and documentary elements, producing a highly stylized interpretation of elegant and decadent ways of life. Newton turned his attention to making powerful, confrontational nudes. He conceived witty, erotic picture stories for the American magazine Oui, and he gave his unique twist to the creation of pictures for Playboy. Newton’s portraits of celebrities became an evermore important aspect of his work, and while these were at first mostly related to the world of fashion, over the years he broadened his portfolio to include countless people who intrigued him—artists, actors, film directors, politicians, industrial magnates, the powerful and the charismatic from all spheres. Many of these photos were published through the 1980s in Vanity Fair.

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Helmut Newton dla francuskiego Vogue, Paryż, 1981, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Helmut Newton dla Stern, St. Tropez, 1978, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin the feel of 1930s noir photojournalism with aspects of New Wave films, reflecting his directorial mastery. Over the years, Newton’s work centered basically on fashion, nudes, and portraits, with the three categories often mixing.

Newton staged his first one-man exhibition in Paris in 1975. The following year he published his first book, [I]White Women[/I]. Over the next twenty-five years he worked steadily and productively, publishing a series of books and creating countless exhibitions, the most impressive of which was surely the large-scale celebration of his career at the Neue National Galerie in Berlin on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 2000, accompanied by the simply titled book, [I]Work[/I]. Newton was highly sought after until the end of his life. He died of injuries from a car accident at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, California in 2004. Shortly befofe his death he had established the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, Germany, and donated approximately one-thousand of his works to his native city.

Helmud Newton Clasic

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Materiały pochodzą z : www.anseladams.com www.edward-weston.com/edward_weston_biography.htm http://www.pinhol.com.pl/s&a/artykuly/adams/adams.htm http://jewelryaccessories.com/fashion-photographers/360-helmut-newton.html http://www.pinhol.com.pl/s&a/artykuly/adams/adams.htm http://fotograficzno.pl/edward-weston/ http://bwworld.wordpress.com/2007/03/17/edward-weston/

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