Tribute to Adams

Reviewers frequently characterize Adams as a photographer of an idealized wilderness that no longer exists. On the contrary, the places that Adams photographed are, with few exceptions, precisely those wilderness and park areas that have been preserved for all time. There is a vast amount of true and truly protected wilderness in America, much of it saved because of the efforts of Adams and his colleagues.

Seen in a more traditional art history context, Adams was the last and defining figure in the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century American landscape painting and photography. Adams always claimed he was not "influenced," but, consciously or unconsciously, he was firmly in the tradition of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Carlton Watkins, and Eadweard Muybridge.

And he was the direct philosophical heir of the American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir. He grew up in a time and place where his zeitgeist was formed by the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and "muscular" Americanism, by the pervading sense of manifest destiny, and the notion that European civilization was being reinvented — much for the better — in the new nation and, particularly, in the new West. Adams died in Monterey, California.

As John Swarkowski states in the introduction to Adams's Classic Images (1985), "The love that Americans poured out for the work and person of Ansel Adams during his old age, and that they have continued to express with undiminished enthusiasm since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country's response to a visual artist" (p. 5). Why should this be so? What generated this remarkable response?

Adams's subject matter, the magnificent natural beauty of the West, was absolutely, unmistakably American, and his chosen instrument, the camera, was a quintessential artifact of the twentieth-century culture. He was blessed with an unusually generous, charismatic personality, and his great faith in people and human nature was amply rewarded. Adams channeled his energies in ways that served his fellow citizens, personified in his lifelong effort to preserve the American wilderness.

Above all, Adams's philosophy and optimism struck a chord in the national phsyche. More than any other influential American of his epoch, Adams believed in both the possibility and the probability of humankind living in harmony and balance with its environment. It is difficult to imagine Ansel Adams occurring in a European country or culture and equally difficult to conjure an artist more completely American, either in art of personality.

Works of Ansel Adams

Adams's vast archive of papers, memorabilia, correspondence, negatives, and many “fine” photographic prints, as well as numerous “work” or proof prints, are in the John P. Schaefer Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
A portion of his papers relating to the Sierra Club are in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Technical

Ansel Adams, 'Frozen Lake and Cliffs'

1935	Making a Photograph
1948	Camera and Lens
1948	The Negative
1950	The Print
1952	Natural Light Photography
1956	Artificial Light Photography
1963	Polaroid Land Photography Manual
1978	Polaroid Land Photography
1980	The Camera
1981	The Negative
1983	The Print
1983	Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
1992	Basic Techniques of Photography, Book 1 by John P. Shaefer
1998	Basic Techniques of Photography, Book 2 by John P. Shaefer

Biographical / Autobiographical

Photography

Cultural

Posthumous

Photograph by Adams

1985	Classic Images
1990	The American Wilderness
1992	Our National Parks
1993	Ansel Adams in Color
1994	Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the High Sierra
1995	Yosemite
1995	Ansel Adams: California
2000	The Grand Canyon and the Southwest
2001	Ansel Adams at 100
2005	Ansel Adams Trees