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Famous
Photographers > Ansel Adams
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Ansel
Easton Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22,
1984) was an American photographer, best known for his black and white
photographs of California's Yosemite Valley.
Adams was also the author of numerous books about photography, including
his trilogy of technical instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative
and The Print). He co-founded the photographic association Group f/64
along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and
Imogen Cunningham.
He and Fred Archer are credited with creating the zone system, a technique
which allows photographers to translate the light they see into specific
densities on negatives and paper, thus giving them better control
over finished photographs. Adams also pioneered the idea of visualization
(which he often called 'previsualization', though he later acknowledged
that term to be a redundancy) of the finished print based upon the
measured light values in the scene being photographed.
Life
Adams was born in San Francisco, California in an upper-class family.
When he was four, he was tossed face-first into a garden wall in an
aftershock from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, breaking his nose.
His nose was never repaired and appeared crooked for his entire life.
Adams disliked the uniformity of the education system and left school
in 1915, at the age of 12 to educate himself. His original passion
was to become a concert pianist, but Adams became interested in photography
after seeing Paul Strand's negatives. Adams long alternated between
a career as a concert pianist and one as a photographer. He met his
future wife, the camera-shy Virginia Best, in Yosemite.
At age seventeen, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated
to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources. He remained
a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did
his wife, Virginia. Adams was an avid mountaineer in his youth and
participated in the club's annual "high trips", and was
later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada.
It was at Half Dome in 1927 that he first found that he could make
photographs that were, in his own words, "...an austere and blazing
poetry of the real". Adams became an environmentalist, and his
photographs are a record of what many of these national parks were
like before human intervention and travel. His work has promoted many
of the goals of the Sierra Club and brought environmental issues to
light.
Photographs in Adams' limited edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John
Muir Trail, along with his testimony, are credited with helping secure
the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks in 1940.
During World War Two Adams worked on creating epic photographic murals
for the Department of the Interior. Adams was distressed by the Japanese
American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He
was given 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: Photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans
at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California.
In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture.
In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall accepted a commission
from Clark Kerr, then President of the University of California, to
produce a series of photographs of the University's campuses to commemorate
the centennial celebration of the University. 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.
Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his
career. 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.
Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984 from heart failure aggravated by
cancer. When he died he left behind his wife, two children (Michael
born August 1933, Anne born 1935) and five grandchildren.
Publishing rights for the Adams' photographs are handled by the trustees
of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.
The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the
Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1984 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, a
11,760 ft. peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.
The full archive of Ansel Adams' work can be found at the Center for
Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Works
Notable photographs
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, 1927.
Rose and Driftwood, 1932.
Clearing Winter Storm, 1940.
Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
Ice on Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada, 1941.
Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox at Canyon de Chelly
Aspens, New Mexico, 1958.
Photographic
books
Ansel Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places, 2005. ISBN 1-59764-069-7
America's Wilderness, 1997. ISBN 1-56138-744-4
California, 1997. ISBN 0-8212-2369-0
Yosemite, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2196-5
The National Park Photographs, 1995. ISBN 0-89660-056-4
Photographs of the Southwest, 1994. ISBN 0-8212-0699-0
Ansel Adams: In Color, 1993. ISBN 0-8212-1980-4
Our Current National Parks, 1992.
Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 1986. ISBN 0-8212-1629-5
Polaroid Land Photography, 1978. ISBN 0-8212-0729-6
These We Inherit: The Parklands of America, with Nancy Newhall, 1962.
This is the American Earth, with Nancy Newhall, 1960. ISBN 0-8212-2182-5
Born Free and Equal, 1944. Spotted Dog Press
Technical
books
The Camera, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2184-1
The Negative, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2186-8
The Print, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2187-6
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs ISBN 0-8212-1750-X
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