Ansel Adams: Biography, Technique, and Iconic Images

Biography

Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco to businessman Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray in 1902. At the age of four, in 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake tossed him to the ground; the fall resulted in a "badly broken nose" that marked him for the rest of his life, according to biographer William Turnage. Adams did not do well in school, but he was deeply interested in music and found tremendous joy in the natural world. His love of nature was nurtured in the Golden Gate area and in the Yosemite Valley. His parents gave him a Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie camera, he joined the Sierra Club, and he began spending a great deal of time — and taking photographs — in Yosemite.

He moved up to better cameras and began receiving recognition by the 1930s. He had his first gallery showing in 1933 at the Delphic Gallery in New York, and his first book was published in 1935. He photographed for the National Park Service, IBM, AT&T, Kodak, and others to earn the income he needed. As his celebrity grew, he used his position to promote the preservation of wilderness. He is known to have gone camping with President Theodore Roosevelt, and he is, owing to his extraordinary volume of remarkable work, an icon in the world of photography. According to Turnage, the public has expressed "undiminished enthusiasm" over Adams' work through the years; Adams was "an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country's response to a visual artist."

Adams and Technical Excellence

Author Jonathan Spaulding explains that when Adams went to work for a neighbor, Frank Dittman, at the age of 15 as a "darkroom monkey" — Dittman had a darkroom in his basement where he produced finished photos for customers — Adams learned the technical rudiments of photographic chemistry (Spaulding, 1998, p. 28). It was tedious work. Adams started at 7:00 a.m., picking up negatives and prints at Dittman's and making the rounds to drugstores in San Francisco by streetcar. Around 10:30 he began processing the new film. Dittman was not careful about keeping his chemicals fresh, so Adams learned through his apprenticeship what not to do. He came to understand the importance of fresh solutions, the need to control processing times and temperatures, and the necessity of thoroughly washing negatives and prints. "Technical excellence was always Adams' forte and a major contributor to the power of his images," Spaulding explains (p. 28). Adams read every technical handbook he could find and "began to prowl the local camera shops to investigate the rows of lenses, tripods, lights, chemicals, printing papers, cameras and film" (Spaulding, 1998, p. 29).

Adams' technical excellence led him to understand that the full range of tones "from white to black" was required in order to represent his subject "objectively," according to Ansel Adams: Diving Performance (Hammond et al., 2002, p. 75). In order to achieve the inflections required for "emotional expression," Adams used pure bromide papers to produce the darkest blacks, and he also used amidol, metol, and hydroquinone as ingredients in his developers to alter the intensity of his subjects, Hammond explains. When he wanted maximum brilliance in an image he used amidol, and when he wanted greater tonal control he embraced the "new exposure-meter technology," which helped shift the range of photographic tones "up or down the exposure scale for 'emotional amplification.'"

There is no doubt that the most powerful theme in Adams' photographs is the natural world and its wonders. In addition to his fervent love for Yosemite Valley, Adams adored wilderness wherever he found it, and as a leader with the Sierra Club he had no shortage of opportunities to explore it. In 1937, he went on a road trip to the Southwest with friends, including Georgia O'Keeffe. He traveled through Hopi country, Navajo country, and across Arizona and Colorado. The photographs he captured during this journey included bare aspen trees — the image is titled Aspens, Dawn, Dolores River Canyon. In 1941, he received a commission from the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph the National Parks of America. He returned to the Southwest, and from that trip he produced two of the most famous and iconic photographs of his career: Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico and White House Ruins, Canyon de Chelly.

Adams' Themes and Point of View

His point of view in life was that of a "tireless crusader for the institutional recognition of photography as a fine art"; he is also recognized as a person who contributed to the "development of the environmental movement in the United States." His artistic excellence spoke powerfully to the need to conserve America's natural resources. His fame gave him access to political leaders, and he "tirelessly lobbied congressmen, Secretaries of the Interior, and presidents" — including, as noted, Theodore Roosevelt.

Regarding his artistic vision, his early landscape photographs reflected a softer approach to art known as "pictorialism." In time, however, he joined the movement embraced by such noted photographers as Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, and Willard Van Dyke — a group that championed photographic realism as their guiding aesthetic. That said, Adams was also a "restless and innovative experimentalist" who developed many styles and practices that have since become standard in the field.

Conclusion

Adams' iconic Tetons and the Snake River has actually been misidentified as a painting rather than a photograph. The light behind the Tetons illuminates the clouds like a painted depiction of angels arriving in heaven. The Snake River forms a dramatic capital "C" that seems to emerge from beneath the mountains. The jagged peaks, dusted with snow — white juxtaposed against the dark rock — are surreal as they reach toward the shadowed sky. The ripples on the river and the dark, phantom-like trees in the foreground deepen the mystery and wonder of the image.

Adams was also profoundly moved by the suffering of Japanese Americans interned in relocation camps following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. His photograph of Tom Kobayashi at the Manzanar Relocation Center conveys loneliness, despair, and muffled anger. With his chin resting in his hand, the subject reflects a sense of deep, quiet questioning — a powerful departure from Adams' landscapes, and evidence of the breadth of his empathetic artistic vision.

Adams was a celebrated photographer at a time when the country was beginning to pay particular attention to its natural wonders, and President Theodore Roosevelt was spearheading the establishment of national parks in order to preserve the wilderness for future generations. Adams was also alive during the years when the Sierra Club was building a base of institutional power through conservation and environmental education. His legacy goes deeper than his photographs; it goes to the heart of the need for Americans to love, respect, and nurture their natural world.

Imaging Info. (2011). Techniques of Ansel Adams explored. Retrieved October 26, 2011, from

Spaulding, Jonathan. (1998). Ansel Adams and the American landscape: A biography. University of California Press.

Turnage, William. (2008). Ansel Adams, photographer. Retrieved October 26, 2011, from