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Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer, best known for his black and white photographs of California's Yosemite Valley.
Adams was also the author of numerous books about photography, including his trilogy of technical instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative and The Print). He co-founded the photographic association Group f/64 along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and others.
He and Fred Archer are credited with creating the zone system, a technique which allows photographers to translate the light they see into specific densities on negatives and paper, thus giving them better control over finished photographs. Adams also pioneered the idea of visualization (which he often called 'previsualization', though he later acknowledged that term to be a redundancy) of the finished print based upon the measured light values in the scene being photographed.
Adams was born in San Francisco, California in an upper-class family. When he was four, he was tossed face-first into a garden wall in an aftershock from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, breaking his nose. His nose was never repaired and appeared crooked for his entire life.
Adams disliked the uniformity of the education system and left school in 1915, at the age of 12 to educate himself. His original passion was to become a concert pianist, but Adams became interested in photography after seeing Paul Strand's negatives. Adams long alternated between a career as a concert pianist and one as a photographer. He met his future wife, the camera-shy Virginia Best, in Yosemite.
At age seventeen, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources. He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did his wife, Virginia. Adams was an avid mountaineer in his youth and participated in the club's annual "high trips", and was later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada. It was at Half Dome in 1927 that he first found that he could make photographs that were, in his own words, "...an austere and blazing poetry of the real". Adams became an environmentalist, and his photographs are a record of what many of these national parks were like before human intervention and travel. His work has promoted many of the goals of the Sierra Club and brought environmental issues to light.
Photographs in Adams' limited edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, along with his testimony, are credited with helping secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks in 1940.
During World War Two Adams worked on creating epic photographic murals for the Department of the Interior. Adams was distressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He was given permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo-essay first appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California.
In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture.
In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall accepted a commission from Clark Kerr, then President of the University of California, to produce a series of photographs of the University's campuses to commemorate the centennial celebration of the University. The collection, titled "Fiat Lux" after the University's motto, was published in 1967 and now resides in the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.
Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his career. He was elected in 1966 a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984 from heart failure aggravated by cancer. When he died he left behind his wife, two children (Michael born August 1933, Anne born 1935) and five grandchildren.
Publishing rights for the Adams' photographs are handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.
The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1984 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, a 11,760 ft. peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.
1944
Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California
Ansel Easton Adams
1958
Aspens, Northern New Mexico
Ansel Easton Adams
1942
The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Ansel Easton Adams
1948
Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain, Yosemite Valley
Ansel Easton Adams