He was consulted on technical matters by photographers
Edward Weston and Paul Strand and also by professional photographic businesses
such as Polaroid and Hassleblad. He produced a whole series of technical books
on photography that are still in print and widely purchased almost 50 years
after their first publication.
Adams always used "large format" cameras for
his photographs, the pin-sharp realism advocated by his approach to capturing
images and also by the f/64 group meant that only large negatives could deliver
the necessary quality of image. Pictures of Adams with his chosen tools therefore
frequently make his equipment look very Victorian and old-fashioned. Large format
cameras are physically large and heavy, require a substantial tripod, take time
to set up and set a limitation on how many pictures can be taken on account
of the physically large size, bulk and not to mention cost of the negatives.
A single 10" by 8" negative that Adams exposed to capture his famous
"Moonrise Hernandez" picture for instance
has an area almost 60 times larger than a standard 35mm negative.
Such equipment imposes upon the photographs
themselves. With a smaller format camera an image is the work of seconds
and instantly repeatable. With large format the setting up and preparation takes
much longer and a negative once exposed is one of only relatively few that may
be captured. This focuses the mind as it does the camera, Adams would sometimes
wait for hours or even days to capture a scene waiting while the lighting and
the elements of the view fell into exactly the right position. Another result
of using large format equipment meant that Adams could work individually on
a particular negative, aiding his "visualization" of an image and bringing it
to a real print. Such large negatives blown up to 30" x 40" would require only
a 4 times magnification as opposed to 28 times for a standard 35mm negative.
The difference in the quality of the final image is enormous.
Ansel Adams was at times a workaholic,
he worked for 18 hours or more a day for weeks on end before eventually going
home and taking to his bed. He also consumed large amounts of alcohol, had an
intense and hectic social life, had affairs and was for a lot of the time an
absent father. He felt that he had to promote photography as a fine art. He
took photographs in order to express his creative nature, his inner emotions
and not simply to record a scene.
In 1940 Adams Taught his first Yosemite workshop,
the U. S. Camera Photographic Forum, in Yosemite with Edward Weston. He lectured
and taught courses at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944-1945 and the next year
in 1946 he was involved in the establishment of the department of photography
at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute)
at the time one of the first of its kind.
A Guggenheim Fellowship (a grant for artists
to pursue their talents) was awarded in 1946 (one of three awarded, in
1946, 1948 and 1959) to photograph National Park locations and monuments. Some
very productive years followed and a number of
portfolios were produced beginning with
Portfolio 1: "In Memory of Alfred
Stieglitz" in 1948. He made trips to Hawaii, Alaska, and Maine in 1950 and
published Portfolio 2: "The National Parks and Monuments."
In 1953 he collaborated with Dorothea Lange on a Life magazine
commission for a photo essay on the Mormons in Utah. Portfolio 3: Yosemite
Valley was published by the Sierra Club in 1960.
Adams moved to Carmel, California,1962. In 1967 he was influential
in the foundation of the "Friends of Photography" of which he became president.
By 1966 he had been elected a "Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
By the late 1970s his pictures and skills had gained much
public attention and Ansel Adams prints were selling to collectors for prices
never before achieved by a living American photographer. He had given up active
photography by now and was dedicating himself to revising his technical photographic
books, publishing books of his life's work, and preparing prints for a variety
of exhibitions.
Adams was an ardent environmentalist in the days before
such a term meant anything. He wrote to anyone he thought he might influence
by his conservation philosophy - politicians, bureaucrats, newspaper editors
and fellow members of the Sierra Club. His greatest influence however was through
the lens rather than the pen. The beautifully crafted powerful images of the
unspoilt American outdoors carried more weight than any letter ever could and
reached far more people far more quickly and more viscerally. His photographs
were his greatest contribution to the environment that he loved so deeply.
The key issues to Adams were Yosemite National
Park in particular, the National Parks system in general and the preservation
of wilderness. He resisted the notion that the National Parks were "resorts"
and abhorred their development. The range of his environmental concerns was
legion.
Ansel Adams has been hailed a genius and few
would contradict that assessment. His photographs have been criticized in
that they don't not generally contain people or even any indication of human
influence. The great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson made the oft
repeated comment that "The world is falling to pieces and all that Adams and
Weston photograph is rocks and trees".
This is perhaps unfair as during the years of
the second world war Adams made a photographic study of interned Japanese whose
only crime was to be living in America with American values and life-styles
when America was then at war with Japan. These photographs themselves were not
received well at the time as perhaps they showed an embarrassing aspect of the
war that some authorities would have preferred to have kept hidden. This was
exhibited in 1944 under the title
Born Free and Equal.
It is often said that Ansel Adams could only
have been the product of America, and certainly in his latter years and possibly
even more so since his death he has been taken to the heart of the American
people as their own unique product.
Writing this as I am, a non-American, I think
of Ansel Adams not as belonging to any nation at all. In the same way that all
races the world over understand the writings of Shakespeare, Homer and folk
legends and stories that cross all cultural boundaries and speak to every one
of us. So the photographs of Ansel Adams speak of nature, of beauty and of why
they are important to the soul of man.
Ansel
Adams: 2006 Wall Calendar
Ansel
Adams: 2006 Weekly Engagement Calendar
