Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams is best known for his black and white photography, and the development of the zone technique. This technique allows for measured light to be translated into specific densities on negatives and paper – giving optimal control over finished photographs. He collaborate with photographers such as
Ansel Adams can best be described as a revolutionary – even at a young age, he was already moving against the flow, preferring to be self taught with the aid of tutors – unfettered by the constraints of the education system. He had great passion for classical music, being an accomplished pianist, yet he vacillated between music and photography in his early years.
What Ansel Adams is best known for, is his tireless dedication to preserving some of natures beautiful monuments and world natural resources. He had been inspired by a gift in the form of a book he received from an Aunt called “In the Heart of Sierras”. The photographs in the book had caught his interest and he persuaded his family to take a vacation to Yosemite in 1916. His love of nature stimulated his interest, to be involved in the Sierra Club, and became a member at the age of 17. It was at Yosemite that he met Virginia Best, who became his wife. He was a keen mountaineer and often took part in the Sierra Club’s annual hikes into the Sierra Nevada. Strangely enough it was whilst climbing at Half Dome in 1927 that his passion for photography finally took off.
Capturing the bounties of nature – it was not long before he became an avid environmentalists as he noticed the environmental changes in places that he had previously photographed. In the early 1930’s he photographed Mt Williamson, with farm workers in the foreground and then went on to the John Muir Trail, to cover the efforts of the Sierra Club to ensure that the Kings Canyon and Sequoia be founded as National Parks, to preserve it as part of Americas national heritage. He published a limited-edition booked focusing specifically on this heritage. Ansel Adams testified before congress, played pivotal role in securing the future of the area as a National Park.
San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Museum displayed 80 photographs as a one man show. During WWII, he was commissioned by the Department of Interior, to create photographic murals. Whilst on assignment for them his was shocked to discover how the Japanese Americans were being detained in camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Obtaining permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Camp in Owens Valley, not far from Mount Williamson – he shot a photo essay called Born Free and Equal: Photographs of Loyal Japanese-Americans.
Ansel Adams often collaborated with photographers, Fred Archer, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and William van Dyke. He was a co-founder of the magazine Aperture.
He along with Dorothea Lange in 1953 was commissioned to do a photo essay feature for Life Magazine on the Mormons in Utah. It was memorable edition.
Ansel Adams was awarded three Guggenheim grants to photograph the American national parks between 1944 and 1971. Under the auspices of the US Camera Photographic Forum in Yosemite he held photographic techniques workshops with Edward Weston. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected him to a Fellowship in 1966 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. For his ceaseless preservation efforts the Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed after him. A mountain in the Sierra Nevada, was also named after him and became Mount Ansel Adams – a true tribute to a great man and creative natural photographer.
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