This is the issue of a recurring special about the great photographers that shaped the art as we know it today. Click this if you missed Part 1!
Ansel Adams
February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984
Ansel Adams was born February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California. As the only child of a family in decline, Adams began exploring nature from a very young age. Due to his hyperactive nature, he was dismissed from a number of private schools, before being educated at home by private tutors at age 12. This proved decisive, as it allowed Adams to fully develop his creative nature outside of the constraints of an organised school system. Originally taking up the piano he proved to be a gifted musician and pursued a career in music at an early age.
In 1916 he first visited Yosemite National Park and it was there that he took his first images using a Kodak Brownie camera. For many years Adams was torn between his hobby of photography and his chosen profession as a musician. Ultimately the lure of Yosemite National Park won him over and he dropped his career in music, to focus on photography.
An avid outdoorsman, Adams would roam the countryside on long hikes through the High Sierra, eventually joining the Sierra Club at age 27. At this point, his love of photography and environmentalism merged and he began documenting the wild parts of North America using a large format camera, arguably the most impractical medium to use when going on a long hike up a mountain. The choice of using a large format camera was down to Adams obsession with capturing nature as accurately as possible and -luckily for us- resulted in some of the most impressive landscape photographs since the dawn of photography.
From the 1930's to 1950's Ansel Adams roamed National Parks, taking countless photographs, which would ultimately be considered some of his most iconic images. These would later prove an invaluable document of Americas last truly wild places and have helped support conservation programs to this day.
In later life Adams focused more on his darkroom work, producing numerous prints and passing his talents in photography on to a large number of students who worked under him. Additionally, he became a fervent petitioner on behalf of the national parks and was able to use the fame he had gathered to influence legislation to the benefit of environmental conservation.
At age 82 Ansel Adams died of heart disease in a hospital in Monterey, California.
Ansel Adams received countless awards and accolades for his pioneering work in photography and environmental conservation. Some of his most notable achievements are receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 (the highest civilian honour in the United States), honorary doctorates from Harvard and Yale and being elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Most notably, his contribution to conservation programs extended beyond his death and has helped preserve countless swaths of wild land in America. As a direct result of his work, Congress created the 200,000 Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada shortly after his death.
I will leave you with a couple of his iconic photographs and would encourage you to spend a minute or two on each image to fully take in the majesty Ansel Adams has captured for us:
Source The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, WY, 1942
Source Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National PArk, CA, 1960
Source Canyon de Chelly from White House Overlook, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1942
Source Mirror Lake, Mount Watkins, Yosemite National Park, 1937
Source Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, CA, 1944
Once again, a short post such as this cannot truly do any justice to Ansel Adams life work. As such, I urge you to visit the National Archives and the Ansel Adams website to learn more about this amazing man's work and legacy.
“A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.”
– Ansel Adam
