Ansel Adams (February 20th 1902 to April 22nd 1984)

Ansel Easton Adams was born February 22nd 1902 in the city of San Francisco to Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray Adams.  He was named after his uncle Ansel Easton, the family was well off by the standards of the day with the income being provided from the family lumber business that had been set up by Ansel Adams paternal grandfather. (Although this wealth was diminished over time by the declining fortunes of the business. Ironically this is an industry that Adams would later be critical of as an environmentalist). The family moved in 1903 from the Western Addition area of San Francisco 2 miles west to a new home near Seacliff with views across the bay towards the Golden Gate. Location of the well known bridge some 30 years later.

Some of Ansel’s earliest memories were of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that struck at 5.12am on April 18th. “At five-fifteen, we were awakened by a tremendous noise. Our beds were moving violently about. Nelly (Ansels Nanny) held frantically onto mine, as together we crashed back and forth against the walls. Our west window gave way in a shower of glass, and the handsome brick chimney passed by the north window, slicing through the greenhouse my father had just completed. The roaring, swaying, moving, and grinding continued for what seemed like a long time; it actually took less than a minute. Then, there was an eerie silence with only the surf sounds coming through the shattered window and an occasional crash of plaster and tinkle of glass form downstairs.” (Ansel Adams An Autobiography with Mary Street Alinder P.7 Thames & Hudson 1985). One of the aftershocks led him to fall and break his nose when he fell into the garden wall.

Ansel Adams described himself as a hyperactive child and possibly a hypochondriac prone to bouts of sickness. Young Ansel also struggled in main stream education and was asked to leave several private schools, his father pulled him out of school in 1915 at the age of 12. He ended up being educated at home but Adams resumed and then completed his formal education by attending the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School, until he graduated from eighth grade in 1917.

From reading his Autobiography ‘Ansel Adams An Autobiography with Mary Street Alinder  Thames & Hudson 1985’ he seems to me to have been a curious and intelligent child growing up in a conservative household. His behavior in todays society could be seen as the actions of a clever, possibly precocious child but his questions at the turn of the 20th century may well have been seen as challenging. “Certain matters of life were completely avoided or most daringly spoken of in whispers. That did not stop me from asking, “Does God go to the toilet?” Grandfather Bray would clearly enunciate, sometimes between clenched teeth, “Plague be gone, young’un.” When talking to his mother, “Inevitably, I pondered the beginnings: where from and how had I entered life? I asked these questions of my mother; she merely shook her head.” (P.12 & 12 Alinder 1985).

Although Adam’s father was conservative in his nature he had the foresight to see that his son required a more individual educational path and this is something that he acknowledged in his autobiography. His father taught him french and algebra and encouraged him in his pursuit of music, his ability as a pianist (he started to play at aged 12), may well have been photography’s loss if his choices were different as he was a talented musician of great ability. The discipline required in learning a musical instrument helped Ansel learn to focus on a subject rather than follow his natural hyperactive impulses. The area he was brought up in helped lay the foundations for his interest in the great outdoors enjoying nature in his local environment. He says of his father, “I often wonder at the strength and courage my father had in taking me out of the traditional school situation and providing me with these extraordinary learning experiences. I am certain he established the positive direction of my life that otherwise, given my hyperactivity, could have been confused and catastrophic.” (P.21 Alinder 1985).

June 1st 1916 was to be a pivotal date in the young Ansel Adams life, it was his first visit to  Yosemite. The excitement of his first day there was almost too much for him and he struggled to recall it, however he said this of his first day, “I do recall the shivering night and the unbelievable glow of a Sierra dawn. A new era began for me.” (P.53 Alinder 1985).

It was on this trip that he was given his first camera a Kodak Brownie which he used to capture scenes of the local area. He returned to the area several times and in 1919 on a visit recovering from the flu he learned that the custodian of the Sierra Club was leaving and applied for the job, he got it and 1920 saw Adam’s back leading parties around the park and getting to know the area that was to feature so strongly in his later work. Adams later said, “I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.” (P.67 Alinder 1985).

The early pictures taken by Ansel were used to make a visual record of his trips into the mountains, the more pictures he took the more his interest grew in photography and he decided to learn how to make photographic prints. He started part time work in 1917 in San Francisco for a Frank Dittman who ran a photo-finishing business in the basement of his house. Although he remembers that the process was not of the highest quality it gave him his first introduction to the photographic process, “These, my first lessons in darkroom technique, were decidedly archaic, not archival.” (P.71 Alinder 1985).

The next decade in Ansels Adams life was pivotal for him professionally as he learnt his craft and personally as he met his wife Virginia Best, in Yosemite, they were married in 1928 and later had two children. He felt the turning point for him was April 17th 1927 on a trip in Yosemite. Up to that point he felt his work had only occasionally transcended into art with any other layers apart from that of a visual representation. He felt on this trip that he had been able to visualise how the picture would be before he took it a skill of great importance when you consider the limitations of the equipment used at the time and the limited exposures available when using large format plate cameras. The result of this trip were three very good plates: Monolith, The Face of the Half Dome and  Mount Galen Clark. “Visualisation is not simply choosing the best filter. To be fully achieved it does require a good understanding of both the craft and aesthetics of photography.” (P.76 Alinder 1985). This pre-visualisation was a skill that Adams developed and helped lift him above a mere recorder of scenes and helped turn his work into art. He was able to use his technical skill and knowledge as a photographer and blend it with his ability as an artist to create the picture he had in his minds eye, thus allowing him to keep all the important aspects of the image within the tonal range of the film and print. This helped lead him to develop the zone system which further added to his armory in his ability to control the tonal range of an image.

An early spring day in 1926 was a day that also had great influence on the direction that Ansel Adams life took, he received a phone call inviting him to an impromptu party at Berkeley which was full of a typical cross section of the ‘Bay Area intelligentsia.’ He was introduced to Albert Bender an insurance magnate and serious patron of the arts who after an examination of Adams work invited him the next day to his office for another look. This was the first interest anyone had shown in his work outside of his musical and mountaineering circles. Adams was there at 10am the next morning, after inspection of the work Albert Bender arranged publication of a portfolio of the work, a hundred copies at 50 dollars each (of which he immediately bought 10) and he had sold a further 50 by lunchtime by using his contacts. Adams however noticed that the title page was misspelt and was also unhappy that the work was not called photographs an indication of the mediums place in the art world at that time. “Hence we coined a bastard word to take the place of photograph - Parmelian Prints.  I am not proud of allowing this breach of faith in any medium. And then, to add to my chagrin, when I saw the finished title page I found an error, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. The name Sierra is already a plural. To add an s is a linguistic, Californian, and mountaineering sin.” (P.82 Alinder 1985).

This meeting with Albert Bender helped introduce Ansel Adams to many influential artists of the time and helped the change into a leading photographer and artist of his day.

The next work of note that Adams produced was in conjunction with Mary Austin, one of the early nature writers of the American Southwest about the ‘Pueblo of Taos.’ Albert Bender once again took interest in the work and offered to sponsor it. Rather than use a half tone printing process he decided to hand print all of the pictures and the photographic prints were then bound into the book, over 1300 prints in all. ‘Taos Pueblo’ was published in 1930, one hundred books were produced with eight artists copies at $75 each, they were all sold within two years.

Adams at the start of 1930 was still unsure as to whether it would be photography or music that would be his lives driving passion although the circles in which he mixed helped make his decision easier. It was in the 30’s that Adams began to mix with some of the most influential photographers of the age and the began to understand the importance of tonal range in the image. It was this year that he met Paul Strand and Georgia O’Keeffe. At dinner Strand enquired into Adams Taos project, “Strand inquired politely about my Taos Pueblo project, then I inquired if he had any prints to share. He asked if I would like to see his negatives, since he had brought no prints from New York. Of course I would!

The next afternoon Paul took a white sheet of paper and set it in the sunlight streaming through a south window. He placed me squarely in front of the paper and opened a box of 4x5 inch negatives. He handed them to me, admonishing, “Hold them only by the edges.”

They were glorious negatives: full, luminous shadows and strong high values in which subtle passages of tone were preserved. The compositions were extraordinary: perfect uncluttered edges and beautifully distributed shapes that he had carefully selected and interpreted as forms - simple, yet of great power. I would have preferred to see prints, but the negatives clearly communicated Strands vision. “My understanding of photography was crystalized that afternoon as I realized the great potential of the medium as an expressive art. I returned to San Francisco resolved that the camera, and not the piano, would shape my destiny.” (P.109 Alinder 1985). Although Adams had decided to focus on photography his use of musical language in his description of ‘Strands’ negatives is evident.

In 1932 Ansels wife Virginia fell pregnant and her father made a generous gift of a $1000 for them to see America before they settled. They headed east just at the start of the ‘Great Depression’. He visited Steiglitz in New York and showed his work the response was positive and that gave him the confidence he needed to push forward with his photography.“ I decided I now had the courage to also show my work to Alma Reed, who owned the respected Delphic Studios, one of the very few art galleries that dared to show photographs at the time. She expressed interest in my work and promised me my first one man show in New York later that year.” (P.125 Alinder 1985). The exhibition opened in November 1933 with fifty prints on display. Although not a financial success in this dark economic period it did receive positive reviews. Ansel Adams returned yearly to visit Steiglitz and this resulted in an exhibition in 1936 at ‘An American Place’ “Rather than say Steiglitz influenced me in my work, I would say that he revealed me to myself. Paul Strands work showed me the potential of photography as an art form; Steiglitz gave me the confidence that I could express myself through that art form.” (P.126 Alinder 1985).

As well as the work seen as art Adams had to earn a living and undertook a great deal of commercial work. Not only to support his family but also to subsidise his art photography. He carried on this commercial work until the 1970’s and is extremely candid about his often financially precarious life as a professional photographer. Something I am sure has resonance with todays crop of professionals. “I did everything from catalogs to industrial reports, architecture to portraiture. Our bank account would dwindle and to a distressing level and I would grow deeply concerned, then, usually at the financial brink, with creditors gathering, the phone would ring and an assignment would present itself.” (P.126 Alinder 1985).

In 1932 Adams with Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and Willard Van Dyke with other well known photographers of the day set up group f/64 (named after the smallest aperture setting allowing great depth of field and sharpness) this group was set up to promote photographic realism rather than pictures that were set up look like impressionist paintings. A view that I agree with, today photography has it place as an art form in its own right and I feel that copying other art forms was an evolutionary dead end for photography as it in fact turned out to be, many people have heard of Adams and his work can the same be said of Mortensen? The achievement of the f64 group was to bring the debate about photography as an art form to the fore, often this debate was heated as can be seen in this quote from Adams, “Who were these pictorialists (we called them fuzzy-wuzzies) that group f/64 so strongly reacted against? At this time their champion was a Los Angeles photographer, William Mortensen. His photographs were of models suggesting classic and Renaissance characters in historical and allegorical situations whilst in various stages of nakedness and period costume. They were just plane awful.” (P.112 Alinder 1985). Strong words, the f/64 group did not carry on in any active sense after this early flourish but it can be seen to have sparked debate and Adams was still in contact with its founding members for many years.

The ‘Zone System’ was developed by Adams in conjunction with Fred Archer a well known photographer and teacher and allows variation in exposure and development to extend the tonal range in a negative and therefore the print. Although it was developed into a workable system they were actually carrying on the work done in the late 19th century on sensitometry by Hurter and Driffield. This work came to light in 1941 whilst he was teaching at the ‘Art Centre School’ in Los Angeles.’ He used this process to help him achieve his pre-visualisation of the image. He said of the ‘Zone System’ “I consider myself an artist who employs certain techniques to free my vision.” This system of exposure and pre-visualisation would certainly have helped in Ansels next major work his photography of the National Parks for the US government.

In 1941 he received a letter from Harold Ickes ‘United States Secretary of the Interior, from 1933 to 1946’ requesting that he photograph the National Parks under the aegis of the Department of the Interior for the ‘Mural’ project. “In 1935 Ickes had begun a project to cover the walls of the new ‘Department of the Interior’ with murals depicting the ‘National Park’ system. Numerous artists were commissioned but no photographers.” (America’s Wilderness, The Photographs of Ansel Adams with the writings of John Muir, P7) This changed after he viewed some of Adams work, the work he was producing was a perfect fit for the project. He produced 225 prints for the project although they were never used for their intended purpose as the project was ended on July 1st, 1942 because of the pressures of World War II. Adams however kept the negatives and was free to use them as he wished. He return to the parks to photograph them in 1946, 1948 and 1958 with funds provided by the ‘Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.’

The work Adams did for the US government was very different from the work of other photographers involved with the government at the time. The ‘Farm Securities Administration’ or FSA was a government organisation that was set up to help combat rural American poverty in 1937. These photographers documented the US in a period of great economic upheaval and included people such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein as well as others. The body of work produced was so different in style and directive to the work of Adams. Adams was photographing the landscape and the natural environment and the FSA photographers under the direction of Roy Stryker were documenting America during and after the ‘Great Depression’ showing dignity and despair amongst the farmers of the time with extremely strong documentary work produced by this group.

Adams was also a great technician and he was well known for testing Edward Land’s Polaroid film technology, he met Land in 1948 who demonstrated his instant photography process to Adams, which excited him from the beginning. He said of the moment he first saw the process, “As it was peeled from its negative after just sixty seconds, the sepia print had great clarity and luminosity. We were both beaming with the satisfaction of witnessing a photographic breakthrough come alive before our eyes.” (P.293 Alinder 1985). This association with Polaroid continued throughout his career and was an ardent supporter of the process with him believing that many of his best work of the 1950s was achieved on Polaroid film.

It would be be remiss of me in an essay about Ansel Adams not to mention his politics, which is mainly known about with regard to conservation. He however lived through the period of McCarthy where freedom of thought and expression was restricted in an America that seemed to be less tolerant and more fearful than ever before. “During the McCarthy era there was a sour taste of evil in the air, an unsettling distortion of our American principles of justice. The rumblings that shuddered out of Washington were picked up in all parts of the country; friend turned against friend; reputations were destroyed; the Gestapo spirit was alive in all levels of society. Artists, writers, philosophers, and scientists were the prime targets. There was a conspiracy against freedom and imagination that was ruthlessly directed against liberal thought and belief.”(P.343 Alinder 1985).

Throughout the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations his political energies were centered around California and the Sierra Club and conservation issues. In 1975 Adams met President Ford to present him with a print for display at the Whitehouse and took the opportunity to present him with a document, ‘New Initiatives for the National Parks.’ Outline plans to help conserve the areas of great natural beauty. President Ford and Adams met even after the president was out of office with him visiting at Adams home.

In 1980 Ansel Adams received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Carter another man Adams had felt had represented the presidency well, but who could not compete against the Reagan election machine. This is what his citation read, “At one with the power of the American landscape and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on film and on earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature’s movement, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans, Jimmy Carter”.Adams met President Reagan to discuss environmental issues, throughout the interview the only thing that they could both agree on was the use of nuclear power, talking about it and fossil fuels this was his opinion,”I favour which I consider to be the lesser of two evils and support nuclear power.”(Ansel Adams An Autobiography with Mary Street Alinder P.350 Thames & Hudson 1985). It is surprising to see an ardent environmentalist support such a process but he felt that the acid rain was more destructive in the long term.

As Ansel Adams came to the closing period in his life he looked around for a place for his work to be available to students and scholars of the day and following a solo exhibition at the ‘Museum of Art at the University of Arizona’ in 1973 and following discussions the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona was born. People were to be allowed to print his negatives but they must be stamped as not printed by Ansel Adams and never leave the building.  The center now holds many ‘great’ photographers work.

Ansel Adams died of heart disease on Sunday 22nd April 1984 at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, near his home in Carmel, California. He was 82 years old. He left behind a lifetime of achievement in both photography and that of his work as an environmentalist and is possibly the most recognised photographer of his generation and of the 20th century.

Ansel Adams name is so inter woven with photography of the 20th century above all others that it was a pleasure to learn more about the man and his work. I find it a strange question to ask in the requirements for this essay, “do you think they were successful?” I hope the evidence that I have shown here will lead the reader to the conclusion that Ansel Adams was one of the pivotal photographers of the 20th century who turned around the view that photography was not an art form and that copying the style of long dead painters in the pictorialist style such as William Mortensen did was not the way to try to justify photographies place in the world of art. This change in attitude to the medium is something that he and other influential photographers of the period achieved, giving photography its rightful place in the world of art with other disciplines.

I think that Adams early experience of music gave him the ability to look at the negative in a different way and allowed him to appreciate the difference between a ‘mere rendition’ of a musical score and a virtuoso performance with all the rich subtlety and emotion that can be brought to a piece by a talented musician. Several times this is how Adams himself described his negatives - that of the musical score and the printing the playing of the piece with slight differences each time the piece is performed. I wonder if Adams would have been the photographer he was without this early training as a musician, not only the knowledge gained which he seemed to transfer indirectly to the way he thought about photography but the self discipline that good committed musicians need too. “Photographers are, in a sense composers, composers and the negatives are their scores” (P.360 Alinder 1985). This self discipline he clearly brought into his work as an exacting photographer, as brilliant technically as he was artistically.

Direct quotes have been acknowledged in the text using the Harvard referencing system.

Ansel Adams An Autobiography with Mary Street Alinder, Thames & Hudson 1985

America’s Wilderness, The Photographs of Ansel Adams with the writings of John Muir

Playboy Interview published March 1983  http://davidsheff.com/article/ansel-adams/

Peter Barr Essay http://www.hcc.commnet.edu/artmuseum/anseladams/barressay.html

University of Arizona Centre for for Creative Photography http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/item/4538

www.camera-portraits.com information regards the work of the FSA http://camera-portraits.com/2012/06/07/documenting-america-roy-stryker-and-the-fsa/

The Portfolios of Ansel Adams,  Introduction by John Szarkowski, Little Brown and Company 2011

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