PhotoJ +: Photographer of the Week: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was one of the best known photographers of the early 20th century, as well as one of the best known advocates for environmental conservation. Throughout his life, he had a deep love of nature, and an abiding passion for photography as a medium, which was reflected in his work throughout his life.

Born in 1902, Ansel Adams read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in his youth. Reading their works gave him his long-standing love of the wilderness, which was one of many factors that led him to become such a strong advocate of environmental issues. The transcendentalist views discussed in their writings had a strong influence on his later photographic work.

Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1915, and visited the area countless times throughout his life. He joined the Sierra Club, an organization of photographers and environmentalists dedicated to conservation efforts in the Sierra Nevada range, in 1916. Later, he joined their board of directors in 1934. In later life, he received the Conservation Service Award in 1968, and the Medal of Freedom in 1980, both for his conservation efforts.

One of the many things Ansel Adams was known for was his "visualization" method for taking photos. Before he even took the photo, he would carefully envision what he wanted its final composition to look like. He then created what he'd visualized using various lenses, filters, and editing techniques. Chief among these editing techniques was the "Zone System," a process which calculated the exposure & development of film to very precise shades of grey. Each part of a frame was separated into zones, and each one was assigned a number between 0 (pure white) and 9 (pure black). The end result was a photo that showed details in highly sharp clarity. In using these methods, Adams sought to not simply capture what he saw when he took a photograph, but to convey how what he saw made him feel.

Like many renowned artists, Ansel Adams often struggled to make ends meet. Despite this, his work still proved to be immensely popular throughout his life, being shown in many publications and galleries. His first "big break" was having some of his photographs published in the Sierra Club's newsletter. Years later, he opened his own creative photography center in his home town of San Francisco, and founded the California School of Fine Arts' Department of Photography.

Despite his fame, Adams did still struggle financially from month to month. To balance this out, he often took several commercial photography jobs. Naturally these jobs often entailed taking photos for the National Park Service, which used them to encourage tourism, but also included work for many notable publications like Life, Fortune, and Arizona Highways magazines. Adams disliked his commercial work only because it often took time away from his artistic pursuits. Aside from that, he didn't have much of a problem with doing it. He saw it as a necessity to get by, and looked down on the idea of photographers who saw commercial work as "selling out."

One bit of commercial work Adams never had any problems with doing was his prolific work for Polaroid, indisputably his favorite camera manufacturers. From 1948 until his death in 1984, he worked for them as a consultant. In that capacity, he tested all of their new cameras that they put out in that time, as well as any new types of film. He also helped train many of their staff photographers.

Ansel Adams had a somewhat unique approach to the issue of environmental conservation. Instead of taking photographs specifically meant to argue the point of protecting the wilderness, he preferred to show people the ones he had taken of the unspoiled beauty of nature, and let those be enough to inspire people.

Even though he was perfectly fine with the National Park Service using his photos to advertise tourism to the Yosemite area, Adams grew increasingly concerned about the effects increased tourism would have on the park in the future. A concern that is still relevant today.

In 1935, the Sierra Club asked Adams to go to Congress and argue in favor of a bill to create the Kings River National Park. He used many of his own photographs to literally illustrate the points he was making to the members of the committee discussing the matter. When the bill to create the park was reintroduced in 1937, Adams mailed a copy of his new book, "The Sierra Nevadas and the John Muir Trail," to the director of the National Park Service. The director later showed the book to President Franlin Delano Roosevelt, himself a staunch environmentalist.

In a rare divergence from his regular work, Ansel Adams decided to collaborate with Dorothea Lange to document the Japanese Americans who had been relocated to internment camps during World War 2. In his own words, Adams considered their relocation a "forced exodus." Being inexperienced with journalistic photography, Adams instead took a similar approach as with his landscape photography. He took shots that showed the internees going about their daily lives, and ones that showed them in an idealized light (literally), both meant to convey the idea that despite the injustices they had suffered, they had held onto their dignity and had managed to make the most out of their situation.

However, the reception of his work was mixed. Some members of the general populace saw his work as "subversive" and "unamerican." Some even went so far as to organize burnings of the book he later published on the subject. Critics, meanwhile, had more rational and balanced things to say about his work. Some felt that his photos lacked depth, seemed too stylized to feel realistic, and failed to properly convey the plight of those detained.

Ansel Adams was an advocate of "straight photography," which means authentically taking and presenting photos "as is," without any alterations made to change the photograph's meaning. His work used light and dark shading to draw the viewer’s eye to certain details in a picture. Reflecting his past career in music, he would often make analogies between it and photography; in these, the film negative was the score, and a print made from it was the performance. Adams was fascinated by the potential new technologies represented. Taking the music analogy a step further, he considered making new prints of his work with these new technologies to be like a modern reimagining of a classical piece. A very apropos analogy, considering modern digital enhancement techniques.

When Ansel Adams died in 1984, he was honored with a 100,000-acre wilderness preserve in Yosemite that was named after him, as well as an 11,000 foot peak in Yosemite a year later.

GALLERY