I too have a respect for this photograher, i.e., Ansel Adams.
I've some of his product and even recall a showing of his work at a big store in Japan many years ago. I went not once, but twice to the exhibition.
Your essay ... well said.
Someone wrote that AA photographed "faux wilderness".
I think that is a simplistic statement devoid of the shifting understandings of his time and the concept of "wilderness".
AA's major "wilderness" shooting, just about all of it the Southwest US plus CA, took place from the 1940's into the 1980's. It was a time when the concepts of "wilderness", "conservation" and "environmentalism" were as often in conflict as they were in agreement.
AA attempted to idealize what he firstly saw as "wilderness", but I think it is common understanding that he knew that the West had already reached a point where "wilderness" was more an ideal than a real. After all, in the 1950's, the man knew that Mono Lake was disappearing and that Lake Powell was filling Glenn Canyon. Yet he did not shoot Glenn - and I don't know - but doubt he shot Mono.
Rather, his very idealization of El Capitan was perhaps an unintended statement that only in the National Parks could you hope to shoot an "idealized wilderness" - even though the very concept of National Park suggests a "reserve" or "museum piece".
The conservationists of the 1950's were the forebearers of the environmentalists of the 1970's and later on. But they, born in an earlier age, still clung to the hope that there was a wilderness that could be preserved because of its "beauty". Environmentalists know that whatever remnants of "wilderness" remain MUST be preserved because of the ecological "necessity" to do so.
In some ways AA was both ahead of and behind his times. He thought he could instill a love of nature by shooting "landscape spectacles" that would inspire people to preserve (conserve) the "wilderness". But, in many ways, the "wilderness" he sought to preserve through his art was by then "faux" in that it had been "preserved" - although he, himself, would not (could not) admit that was the case.
The loss of "true wilderness" is our collective loss. And we are stupid if we criticize his attempts as some kind of "faux" exercise - when all we do is blather on the web and accomplish much less to impact the real world than what AA has.
Thank you for your fantastic article. I enjoyed reading it, and we all have to find our inspiration somewhere.
I admire Adams' work greatly, I've had the privilege of seeing many of his prints in museums and I'm always taken aback by the quality. I don't get emotional about it, however. Other photographers have that type of influence on me. Minor White is one of them. Andre Kertesz is another.
- Thomas
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Please visit my APUG Portfolio - - - Wisdom I believe in: “Do not photograph what you see! Instead capture what you feel when the wind grazes your face, and the scents and sounds fill you with inspiration.” - Per Volquartz
The fact that I like Adam's work, and detest street photography, probably classifies me as an art illiterate.
We should remember that Adams influenced the preservation of areas other than Yosemite, and that he shared his knowledge willingly with almost anyone who showed interest.
Mark
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Mark Layne
Nova Scotia
and Barbados
I think this is a well thought out piece and I enjoyed reading it. It reflects many things that I have always felt , but never really was able to put into words. Since my short time here on APUG, I have seen many AA bashers who seem to be that way for reasons that you precisely point out early in your article. My own respect for AA lies principally in that, through learning the ZS and the art of visualizing the desired end result, I have never seen or thought about my subject more clearly, and thus my entire photographic experience is all the better because of it-----the whole process has become amazingly "fluid" and free.
His legacy, at least for me, is in what he has taught me and not really what he photographed. In addition I would say that his enthusiasm is so pervasive in his writings that it is infectious to me and what I try to do today, and I have not really experienced that with anyone else's work--although I admire others' contributions too. John Sexton was interviewed one time and was asked a question something about what AA's legacy was to him. It was, if I remember, his unfailing enthusiasm for what he did. He remarked that even at the age of about 80, Adams one day emerged from the darkroom with such excitement (child like) about finally getting the print that he had visualized when he made the negative in, I believe, sometime in the 30's.
It's in Adams' autobiography and it (huh-hemm) might have been the forties, but who's counting. CLose enough for horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear war.
This is why I am so against people using digital photography as their first and primary means. When one of my friends picked up photography with her DigiRebel, I did everything I could to get to her to understand what she's doing... Even offering her all my supplies in the darkroom and I'd teach her how to use it.
Sadly, she never took me up on the offer. When we go together to shoot at the racetrack, she frets over why her camera decides to make the track white (it's a new polytrack). I developed my slides that night and got perfect images.
When she frets about her camera not making the right decisions, I advise her on manually exposing a stop or two less. When she responds she's too lazy, I lay my face in my hands and weep.
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Vincent Purcell
Remember, silver is forever.
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