Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 - April 22, 1984) is an American environmental photographer and activist. The black-and-white landscape photos of the West America, especially the Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, books, and the internet.
Adams and Fred Archer developed the Zone System as a way to determine the correct exposure and adjust the final print contrast. The clarity and the resulting depth mark the photo. He mainly uses large format cameras because the big movies used with this camera (especially the 5x4 and 8x10) contribute to the clarity of his fingerprint.
Adams started a photography group known as the F/64 Group, along with fellow photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston.
Video Ansel Adams
Initial life
Little
Adams was born on the West Side of San Francisco, California, the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray Adams. He was named after his uncle, Ansel Easton. Her mother's family came from Baltimore, where her maternal grandfather owned a successful freight business but lost her fortune to invest in unsuccessful mining and real estate ventures in Nevada. The Adams family came from New England, after migrating from Northern Ireland in the early 18th century. His father's grandfather established and built a prosperous wooden business which was then managed by his father, though his father's talents were more in science than with business. Later, Adams condemned the same industry for cutting down large redwood forests.
San Francisco was destroyed by the April 18, 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. One of Adams's earliest memories was observing the smoke from the fire that devastated most of the city several miles to the east. Then four years, Adams was not injured in the initial shock but thrown a face-first into the garden wall during aftershocks three hours later, breaking and scratching his nose. A doctor suggested that his nose be reset after he reached maturity, but remained crooked for his entire life. In 1907, his family moved 2 miles (3 km) west to a new home near the Seacliff neighborhood, just south of the Presidio Army Base. The house has a "beautiful view" of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands.
Adams is a hyperactive child and is prone to frequent diseases and hypochondria. He has several friends, but his family home and surroundings at an altitude overlooking the Golden Gate provides many childhood activities. He has a bit of patience for games or sports, but he loves natural beauty at an early age, collects insects and explores Lobos Creek all the way to Baker Beach and sea cliffs to Lands End, "the busiest and most beautiful beach in San Francisco, wreck and full of landslides. "
His father bought a three-inch telescope, and they enthusiastically shared an amateur astronomy hobby, visiting the Jilat Observatory on Mount Hamilton together. His father then served as treasurer-treasurer of the Pacific Astronomical Society from 1925 to 1950.
Ansel's father's business suffered substantial financial losses after the death of Ansel's grandfather and the result of Panic of 1907. Some causes of poverty were almost caused by Uncle Ansel Easton and Cedric Wright's father George Wright had secretly sold their shares from the company to the Hawaiian Sugar Trust for large sums of money, "deliberately providing the controlling interest." By 1912, the standard of family living had declined sharply.
Ansel was dismissed from several private schools for being restless and negligent, so his father decided to move him from school in 1915 at the age of 12. Adams was later trained by the private tutor, his aunt Mary, and by her father. Her aunt Mary is a devotee of Robert G. Ingersoll, a nineteenth-century and agnostic female suffrager. As a result of her aunt's influence, Ingersoll's teachings were important to Ansel's education. During the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in 1915, his father insisted that Adams spent part of every day studying the exhibition as part of his education. After a while, he went on to complete his formal education by attending Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School until he graduated from eighth grade on June 8, 1917. During the following years, he showed a diploma in the guest bathroom. his home.
Her father raised her to follow Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas: to live a simple moral life, guided by social responsibility to man and nature. Adams has a love affair with his father, but he has a distant relationship with his mother, who disagrees with his interest in photography. The day after his death in 1950, Ansel disputed with the board when choosing a coffin to bury it. He chose the cheapest in the room, a $ 260 coffin that seemed the least he could buy without doing the job himself. The administrator commented, "Do you not honor the dead?" Adams replied, "One more crack like that and I'll take Mama to another place."
Youth
Adams became interested in the piano at the age of 12, and music became the main focus of his youth. Her father sent her to the piano teacher, Marie Butler, who emphasized perfectionism and accuracy. After four years of studying with him, he has another teacher, one of whom is the composer Henry Cowell. For the next twelve years, the piano was Adams's primary work and in 1920, the intended profession. Although he finally ended his involvement with music for photography, the piano gave discipline to a frustrated and uncertain youngster.
Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. He writes about his first view of the valley: "the splendor of Yosemite lunges upon us and it is is noble.... One miracle after the other descends upon us.... There is light everywhere... The new era begins for me. "Her father gave her the first camera during the stay, the box camera of Kodak Brownie, and she took her first photo with" the usual hyperactive enthusiasm ". He returned to Yosemite himself the following year with a better camera and tripod. During the winter, he studied basic darkroom techniques that worked part-time for photographers of San Francisco.
Adams contracted the Spanish Flu during the 1918 flu pandemic and fell severely ill, but he recovered after a few months to continue his outer life.
Adams diligently reads photography magazines, attends camera club meetings, and goes to photography and art exhibitions. He explores the High Sierra during the summer and winter with retired geologist and amateur bird expert Francis Holman, whom he calls "Uncle Frank". During this time, he develops the stamina and skills necessary to photograph at high altitude and with difficult weather conditions.
While in Yosemite, he often deals with the best family, owner of Best's Studio, who allows him to practice their ancient piano piano. In 1928, he married Virginia Best in Best's Studio in the Yosemite Valley. Virginia inherited the studio from his father's artist to his death in 1935, and Adams continued to operate it until 1971. The studio is now known as the Adams Ansel Gallery and is still owned by the Adams family.
At the age of 27, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to protecting the wild places of the earth, and he was hired as a summer administrator of the Sierra Club visitor facility in the Yosemite Valley, LeConte Memorial Lodge, from 1920 to 1924. remained a member all his life and served as a director, as did his wife. He was first elected to the Sierra Club board of directors in 1934 and served on the board for 37 years until 1971. Adams participated in the club's annual High Trips and was then responsible for some of the first climbs in the Sierra Nevada.
During his twenties, most of his friends had music associations, especially violinists and amateur photographers Cedric Wright, who became his friend and philosophical mentor and his culture. Their shared philosophy is from Edward Carpenter's Toward a Democracy , a literary work that supports the pursuit of beauty in life and art. For several years, Adams brought his pocket edition with him while in Yosemite, and that became his personal philosophy as well. He then stated, "I believe in beauty, I believe in rocks and water, air and land, people and their future and their destiny." He decided that his artistic purpose, whether photography or music, was to reveal that beauty to others and inspire them to the same philosophy.
During the summer, Adams will enjoy hiking, camping and photography, and throughout the year he works to improve his piano playing, broadening his piano technique and musical expression. He also gave piano lessons for extra income, with which he bought a grand piano that fit his musical ambitions. An early piano student is a Mountaineer and leader of the Sierra Club, Jules Eichorn.
The first photos were published in 1921, and Best's Studio began selling its Yosemite prints the following year. His early photographs have shown a careful composition and sensitivity to tonal balance. In letters and cards to the family, he writes that he dared to rise to the best points of view and brave the worst elements. At this time, however, Adams is still planning a career in music, although he feels that his little hand restricts his repertoire. It took another seven years for him to conclude that, at best, he might just be a limited-range concert pianist, a piano player, or a piano teacher.
During the mid-1920s, Adams experimented with soft-focus, etching, bromoil processes, and other techniques from pictorial photographers, such as Photo-Secession promoter Alfred Stieglitz who attempted to have photography considered equivalent to painting by trying to imitate it. However, Adams avoided coloring the hands that were also popular at the time. He uses a variety of lenses to get different effects but ultimately rejects pictorialism for a more realistic approach that relies more on sharp focus, high contrast, proper exposure, and dark room workmanship.
Maps Ansel Adams
Photography career
1920s
In 1927, Adams produced his first portfolio in his new style Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras , which included his famous image of Monolith, Half Dome's Face , taken with his Corona view camera using a glass plate and a dark red filter (to enhance tone contrast). On the trip, he has only one plate left, and he "visualizes" the blackening sky effect before risking the last image. He then said, "I have been able to realize the desired image: not the way the subject appears in reality but how it feels felt for me and how it should appear in the finished print". In April 1927, he wrote, "My photographs have now reached the stage when they are worthy of the critical exam in the world, I suddenly find a new style that I believe will put my work the same as the types."
Adams's first portfolio was successful, generating nearly $ 3,900 with sponsorship and promotion of Albert Bender, an art-related entrepreneur. Soon he accepted a commercial assignment to photograph rich customers who bought his portfolio. He also began to understand how important that carefully crafted photographs are reproduced with the best effect. At the invitation of Bender, he joined the Roxburghe Club, an association dedicated to fine printing and high standards in the art of books. He learned a lot about the printing, ink, design, and layout techniques he later applied to other projects. At that time most of his dark work was being done in the basement of his parents' home, and he was limited by insufficient equipment.
He married Virginia Best in 1928 after a break during 1925-26, where he had a brief relationship with various women. Newlyweds moved with their parents to save money. Her marriage also marked the end of her serious effort in her musical career, as well as her ambition as a classical singer.
1930s
Between 1929 and 1942, Adams's work matured and he became more established. The 1930s were a very productive and experimental time for him. He expanded his work, emphasizing the close-up detail as well as the large forms from the mountain to the factory. His first book Taos Pueblo was published in 1930 with a text by writer Mary Hunter Austin. In New Mexico, he was introduced to figures from the Stieglitz circle, including painter Georgia O'Keeffe, artist John Marin, and photographer Paul Strand. Adams's talkative, high spirit nature combined with excellent piano playing make it popular among his artist friends. The strand is especially proven to be influential, sharing his technical secrets with Adams and ultimately convincing Adams to pursue photography with all his talents and energies. One of Strand's suggestions Adams adopted was to use glossy paper to intensify tonal values.
Adams was able to wear his first solo museum exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 1931 through an associate friend in Washington, D.C., featuring 60 prints taken in the High Sierra. He received great reviews from Washington Post : "His photographs are like portraits of a gigantic peak, apparently inhabited by mystical gods." Despite his success, Adams feels that he has not reached the standard of the Strand. He decided to expand his subject to include still photos and close-up photos, and to achieve higher quality by "visualizing" each image before retrieving it. He emphasized the use of small holes and long exposures in natural light, creating sharp detail with various focuses, as shown in Rose and Driftwood (1933), one of his best pictures in life..
In 1932, Adams held a group show at the MH de Young Museum with Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, and they soon formed a f/64 Group that supported "pure or straight photography" above pictorialism, f /64 into a very small aperture setting that provides immense field depth. The group's manifesto states, "Pure photography is defined as having no engineering, composition or idea qualities, derivatives of other art forms."
Adams opened his own art and photography gallery in San Francisco in 1933, mimicking Stieglitz's example. He also began publishing essays in photography magazines and wrote his first instruction book Creating Photos in 1935. During the summer, he often participated with the Sierra Club High Trips outing, as a paid photographer for the group, and the rest this year the club's core members are regularly socialized in San Francisco and Berkeley. In 1933, his first child Michael was born, followed by Anne two years later.
During the 1930s, Adams began to distribute his photographs in the wilderness preservation. He was inspired in part by the increasing desecration of the Yosemite Valley by commercial development, including swimming halls, bowling, golf courses, shops, and car traffic. He created the limited edition Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail in 1938, as part of the Sierra Club effort to secure Sequoia and Kings Canyon appointments as national parks. This book and its testimony before Congress played an important role in the success of the effort, and Congress set the area as a National Park in 1940.
The Yosemite Valley, to me, is always the rising sun, the glitter of green and golden wonders in a stone building and a vast space. I know there are no statues, paintings or music that surpass the fascinating spiritual commands of towering granite cliffs, light patina on rocks and woods, and thunder and whispers of falling and flowing water. Initially colossal aspects can dominate; then we see and respond to complex complexes and persuasive nature.
In 1935, Adams created many new photos of the Sierra Nevada, and one of his most famous photos of Clearing Winter Storm described the entire Yosemite Valley only as a winter storm relented, leaving a new layer of snow. He collected his latest work and held a solo performance at Stieglitz's "An American Place" gallery in New York in 1936. The exhibition proved successful with both critics and the buying public, and earned strong praise from respected Stieglitz. During the balance of the 1930s, Adams took on many commercial tasks to supplement income from struggling Best's Studio. Until the 1970s, Adams was financially dependent on commercial projects. Some of his clients include Kodak magazine, Fortune , Pacific Gas and Electric, AT & amp; T, and American Trust Company. He photographed Timothy L. Pflueger's new Patent Leather Bar for the St Francis hotel in 1939. That same year, he was appointed editor of the US. Camera & amp; Travel , the most popular photography magazine of the time.
1940s
In 1940, Ansel created the A Pageant of Photography , the most important and biggest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors. Together with his wife Adams completed a children's book and a very successful Illustrated Guide to the Yosemite Valley during 1940 and 1941. He also taught photography by giving workshops in Detroit. Adams also began his first serious teaching assignment in 1941 at the Los Angeles Arts Center School, now known as the "Design Art Center", which included training of military photographers. In 1943, Adams had a camera platform installed in its station wagon, to give it a better place in the immediate foreground and a better angle for a wide background. Most of the landscape from time to time is made from the roof of his car than from the peak that was achieved with a rough climb, as in previous days.
On a journey in New Mexico in 1941, Adams photographed the Moon's landscape rising above a simple village with snow-capped mountains in the background, under a dominant black sky. The photo is one of the most famous and is named Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico . Adams's explanation in his books on how it was made might improve the photo's fame: the light on the cross in the foreground quickly faded, and he could not find the exposure meter; However, he remembers the lighting of the Moon and uses it to calculate the exact exposure. Adams's previous account was less dramatic, stating that the photo was made after sunset, with the lighting specified using his Weston Master gauge. But the exposure is really determined, the foreground is less bright, the spotlight in the cloud is dense enough, and the negatives prove to be hard to print. Initial publication Moonrise is in AS. Camera 1943 every year, after being selected by "photo judge" for US. Camera , Edward Steichen. It gave the audience's Upper Month before its first formal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944. For nearly 40 years, Adams reinterpreted the most popular image so far, using the latest darkroom equipment at its disposal, making more than 1,300 unique prints, mostly in 16? at 20? format. Much of the mold was made during the 1970s, ultimately giving Adams financial independence from commercial projects. The total value of this original print exceeds $ 25,000,000; the highest price paid for a printed Month hit $ 609,600 at Sotheby's auction in New York in 2006.
In September 1941, Adams contracted the Interior Department to make photographs of the National Park, Indian reservations, and other locations to be used as mural-sized prints for the department's new departmental decoration. Part of his understanding with the department is that he may also make photos for his own use, using his own movies and processing. Although Adams keeps a careful record of his travels and expenses, he is less disciplined about recording the date of his drawing and forgot to record the date of The rising month , so it is unclear whether it belongs to Adams or to the US Government. But the position of the moon allowed the image to finally be dated from astronomical calculations, and it was determined that The moon was published made on November 1, 1941, the day that he did not charge the department, so the image belonged to Adams. The same is not true for many other negative things, including The Tetons and Snake River , which, made for the Mural Project, belongs to the US Government.
When Edward Steichen formed his Naval Aviation Photography Unit in early 1942, he wanted Adams to become a member, to build and direct dark spaces and sophisticated laboratories in Washington, DC In about February 1942, Steichen asked Adams to join.. Adams agreed, under two conditions: He wanted to be assigned as an officer, and he also told Steichen that he would not be available until July 1st. Steichen, who wants the team to gather as quickly as possible, hands over to Adams and has other photographers. ready early April.
Adams felt depressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after Pearl Harbor's attack. He asked permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo essay first appeared at the Museum of Modern Art exhibition, and was later published as Born Free and Equivalent: The Loyalty of Japanese-Americans. . On the release of this book, "it met some miserable opposition and rejected by many as unfaithful". He also contributed to the war effort by performing many photographic tasks for the military, including making molds of Japanese secret installations in the Aleutians. Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim scholarships during his career, the first in 1946 to photograph every national park. This series of photos produces an unforgettable image of Old Faithful Geyser, Grand Teton, and Mount McKinley. At that time, there were 28 national parks, and Adams photographed 27 of them, missing only the Everglades National Park in Florida.
In 1945, Adams was asked to form the first department of art photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Adams invites Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston to become guest lecturers and Minor White to become the lead instructor. The photography department produced many famous photographers, including Philip Hyde, Benjamen Chinn, Bill Heick, and C. Cameron Macauley.
1950s
In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of Aperture magazine, which is intended as a serious photography journal featuring the best practitioners and the latest innovations. He is also a contributor of Arizona Highways, a travel magazine rich in photos. His article on Mission San Xavier del Bac , with texts by old friend Nancy Newhall, was enlarged into a book published in 1954. This was the first of many collaborations with him. In June 1955, Adams began his annual workshop, taught thousands of students until 1981, He continued with a twenty-year commercial assignment, and became a consultant with a monthly retainer for Polaroid Corporation, founded by a good friend of Edwin Land. He made thousands of photos with Polaroid products, El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise (1968) to be what he considered most memorable. For the last twenty years of his life, the 6x6cm Hasselblad media format was his camera of choice, with the Moon and Half Dome (1960) becoming his favorite photo made with the marque of camera.
Adams published its fourth portfolio, What Majestic Word , in 1963, and dedicated it to the memory of its Sierra Club friend Russell Varian, who was co-founder of klystron and who died in 1959. The title is taken from the poem " Sand Dunes, "by John Varian, Russell's father, and fifteen photographs accompanied by writings from both John and Russell Variants. Russell's widow, Dorothy, wrote the preface, and explained that the photographs were chosen to serve as interpretations of the Russell Variant's character.
Later career
In the 1960s, some major art galleries (without photographic emphasis), who would initially consider photos unfit to be displayed with beautiful paintings, decided to show Adams pictures, especially the former Kenmore Gallery in Philadelphia. In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall received a commission from Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, to produce a series of university campus photos to commemorate the centenary celebration. The collection, titled Fiat Lux after the university motto, was published in 1967 and is now at the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.
In 1974, Adams was a guest of honor at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France. A nightly screening at Arles's ThÃÆ'Â © ÃÆ' Â ¢ tre Antique and an exhibit featured. The festival celebrates the artist three more times after that: in 1976, 1982 and 1985, through screenings and exhibitions.
In 1974, Adams held a large retrospective exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Much of the time during the 1970s was spent curling and reprinting negative negatives from the vault, partly to satisfy the huge demand for art museums that eventually created the photography department and wanted his works. He also devoted considerable writing and prestige skills to the cause of environmentalism, especially emphasizing the coastline of Big Sur California and the protection of Yosemite from overuse. President Jimmy Carter commissioned him to make the first official portrait of a president made by a photograph. That year he also founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which handles some real estate issues.
Working with colored movies
Adams is known primarily for its large print, black-and-white image format, but it also works extensively with color. However, he prefers black-and-white photography, which he believes can be manipulated to produce a variety of bold, expressive tones, and he feels limited by the stiffness of the color process. Most of the color work is done on assignment, and he does not consider the work of color as important or expressive, even explicitly prohibiting the posthumous exploitation of his colorful work.
Contribution and influence
Romantic landscape artists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran described the Grand Canyon and Yosemite during the 19th century and were subsequently replaced by photographer Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and George Fiske. But it is the black and white photographs of Adams in the West that make the most of what many of the National Parks like before tourism, and their persistent advocacy helped expand the National Park system. He uses his works to promote the many goals of the Sierra Club and the newborn environmental movement, but always insists that, for his photographs, "beauty becomes the first". The pictures are still very popular on calendars, posters, and books.
Realistic about land development and subsequent habitat loss, Adams advocates for balanced growth but is distracted by damage from "progress". He declared, "We all know the tragedies of dust, the unforgivable erosions of the unpardonable on the ground, the depletion of fish or games, and the shrinking of the noble forests, and we know that such a disaster discourages people. The wilderness is being pushed back, humans are everywhere, solitude, very important to humans, almost nothing. "
Adams founded the Group f/64 with other masters such as Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham. With Fred Archer, he pioneered the Zone System, a technique for translating perceived light into a certain density on negatives and paper, giving the photographer better control over completed photographs. Adams also advocated the idea of ​​visualization (which he often called "previsualization", though he later acknowledged the term to be redundancy) in which the final image was "seen" by the mind before the photo was taken, toward the goal of reaching all together the desired aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, and mechanical effect. He teaches this and other techniques to thousands of amateur photographers through his publications and workshops. Many of his books on photography, including Morgan & amp; Morgan Basic Photo Series ( The Camera , The Negative , The Print , Natural Light Photography , and Artificial Light Photography ) has become a classic in the field.
Adams met Georgia O'Keeffe in Taos, New Mexico in 1929, and they became lifelong friends. Their works installed in the Southwest desert have been frequently published and exhibited together. Adams candid 1937 portrait of O'Keeffe with Orville Cox, the head wrangler at Ghost Ranch, on the edge of Canyon de Chelly, is an icon. and Adams once commented, "Some of my best photos have been made inside and on the edge of the canyon."
In 1966, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Adams Photo Tetons and Snake River is one of 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft. These images were chosen to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and the Earth's geological features to possible alien civilization.
Her heritage includes helping to improve photography to art that is comparable to painting and music, and also able to express emotions and beauty. He told his students, "It's easy to take photos, but it's harder to make a work in photography than in any other art medium."
Art critic John Szarkowski writes, "Ansel Adams adapts more precisely than any photographer before him to visually understand the particular quality of light that falls in a particular place at a given moment." For Adams, the landscape is not fixed and solid, the statue but the image not substantial, while as light continues to redefine.Sensitivity to the specificity of light is the motive that forces Adams to develop his legendary photography techniques. "
Death and inheritance
Adams died of cardiovascular disease on April 22, 1984, at the Intensive Care Unit at Monterey Peninsula Community Hospital in Monterey, California, at the age of 82. He was surrounded by his wife, the children of Michael and Anne, and five grandchildren.
The publishing rights for most of Adams's photographs are handled by the guardians of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Adams's archive is located at the Creative Photography Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Many works by artists have been sold at auction, including mural-sized prints "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park," which was sold at Sotheby's New York in 2010 for $ 722,500, the highest price ever paid for the original Ansel Adams photo.
John Szarkowski states in the introduction to Ansel Adams: Classic Picture (1985, p.Ã, 5), "The love that Americans pour out for the work and the Ansel Adams people during their ages, and that they continue to express with enthusiasm that has not diminished since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unmatched in our country's response to a visual artist. "
Awards
Adams received numerous awards during his lifetime and posthumously, and there were several awards he named for him.
Adams received his honorary doctorate degree from Harvard University and a Doctor of Fine Arts from Yale University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966. He was awarded the Conservation Service Award by the Department of Home Affairs in 1968, a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980, Sierra Muir Muir Award in 1963, and was inducted into California Hall of Fame by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver in 2007.
The Jungle Desert in the Inyo National Forest and 11,760 feet (3,580 m) peaks in it were renamed Ansel Adams Wilderness and Mount Ansel Adams respectively in 1985.
Adams was presented with the Hasselblad Award in 1981.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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