Authors: Mary Street Alinder
Twelve years after it first opened, the Ansel Adams Center/Friends of Photography shut its doors in October 2001. Ironically, the next exhibition was to be on Group
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.64. All 140 prints of their Ansel Adams Collection given to them by Ansel, and their library of three thousand photography books were sold off, all of the debts were paid, and the excess funds were given to several photography-based organizations.
Respected and influential San Francisco photography dealer Jeffrey Fraenkel, a former board member, said, “The Friends’ demise is indeed sad. Perhaps part of the reason . . . might lay in its basic conception. When the Friends of Photography was founded 35 years ago, photography needed friends. Now that photography has entered the mainstream, the pressing need of such an organization is not as great as it was then.”
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His perception permits a positive look at negative events. I can’t help but think of another reason. One longtime member, when he decided not to renew his membership, told us, “The Friends aren’t friendly anymore.”
To this day, there is no institution on earth that bears Ansel’s name. A worthy tribute would be a place that promotes his democratic teaching, publishes worthy books and journals that would never otherwise be published, and exhibits a wide variety of work, certainly some experimental in nature, but also supporting photographers who further the exploration of the straight style of its namesake.
It has taken me some time to come to terms with Ansel, in life and in death, but now I understand that what he accomplished while he was alive is important enough to carry beyond anything and anyone. In the longest run, his reputation will rest on both his photographs and his actions. His example is indelibly engraved upon many souls.
History will remember Ansel for three significant contributions: his art; his role in the recognition of photography as a fine art; and his work as an environmental activist. Ansel affirmed what it means to live life fully as an artist, disproving the painter Robert Motherwell’s statement that “all artists are voyeurs, not people of action.”
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What makes an Ansel Adams photograph an Ansel Adams? Ansel’s breakthrough images are not direct reflections of the reality before his lens, but rather interpretations of the subject through his deeply felt emotions. They are, in effect, products of his imagination. His artistic inspiration was passion, pure and simple, whether for an America perceived to be under threat by fascist conquerors or, most often and most significantly, for the earth itself.
Technically, Ansel achieved his unique vision through a combination of elevated viewpoint, flattening of image, depth of field, elegant composition, and extensive detail enriched by a remarkable tonal range. As the work of the greatest photographic technician of this century, his pictures demonstrate an astonishing virtuosity.
Whether by lugging his camera up thousands of feet to gaze on Half Dome (
Monolith
), setting up his tripod on an elevated cliff or roadside above the scene (
Moonrise, Clearing Winter Storm
, and
Surf Sequence
), or photographing from a platform built on top of his car especially for the purpose (
Winter Sunrise, Mount Williamson)
, Ansel managed to eliminate the close, low foreground and free the already expansive landscape to become heroic in scale.
A long-focus lens has the effect of compressing space, making distant objects seem larger than they appear to the eye. In Ansel’s hands, the result was often a horizontal layering of tonal bands: foreground, middle, far, and distant. Depth of field, or sharpness from foreground to infinity (unlike human vision, with focus only in the center of the visual field), is difficult to achieve consistently, but it became a hallmark of his photographs. Close examination of each tonal area reveals subtle worlds of phenomenal detail. Each of his masterpieces comprises a tonal range from very black to very white, with a seemingly limitless expression of grays in between—bravura photographic performances.
This is not to say that all forty thousand of Ansel’s negatives, nor even the two thousand from which he made fine prints, are truly important. Nonetheless, such photographs, mostly epic landscapes, as
Monolith; Frozen Lake and Cliffs; Clearing Winter Storm; Surf Sequence; Moonrise; Winter Sunrise; Mount Williamson from Manzanar; Sand Dunes, Sunrise; Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake; Aspens
(both horizontal and vertical versions); and
El Capitan, Winter Sunrise
(I could go on) speak clearly and strongly in the voice of one artist: Ansel Adams. They are masterpieces of photography that cannot be denied, beautiful without being sentimental.
Beauty in art may come into and out of fashion with the critics, but it is forever the first—and last—quality sought by most people. Perhaps an artist’s most difficult challenge is to picture places of overwhelming beauty. In an ultimately courageous act, Ansel chose this most difficult subject; when he began with seriousness, at the age of twenty or so, he had no preconceptions to scare him away.
Ansel had a greater impact on creative photography than any other person in the twentieth century. To become fully acknowledged as a fine art, the medium needed a messenger, someone whose photographs were so clearly art, so patently breathtaking, that there could be no doubt left in the public mind as to its value. For the small, established art audience, Stieglitz was an extremely successful proselytizer, but he had no interest in spreading his gospel far and wide. In contrast, Ansel and his colleagues in Group
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.64 sought a huge audience, and in so doing converted millions of the general populace. Never faltering, Ansel continued as creative photography’s messenger. Through hundreds of exhibitions of his photographs, over decades of dogged determination by means of books, lectures, and workshops, he opened the door wide enough to let the entire medium step through, finally and forever.
Ansel was also one of our most important environmentalists, and here, too, his contributions were multidimensional. He took his citizenship seriously and became the paragon of sustained, responsible activism. Over his thirty-seven years of service as a Sierra Club director, he became that organization’s conscience, first and always concerned with preserving the intangible qualities of the natural world, while others zeroed in on one specific project after another. He forced the environmental movement in America to remain aware of the bigger picture and the effects of action and inaction.
Through his books, posters, and calendars, Ansel brought visually powerful evidence of our endangered American wilderness into hundreds of thousands of homes and offices, so that people could see on a daily basis what now exists but may soon be gone. His driving philosophy, “Witness the magic that is our world,” was joined by a second hope: “Protect the land that I have photographed so that it may be experienced by your children’s children.”
And what of Ansel’s own family, his wife, children, and their children? Yosemite was steeped in Virginia’s blood before Ansel had set foot upon its sacred grounds. Unfortunately for both of them, his decision to marry her was based more on dreams of idealistic love than on the sort of human passion she felt for him. Virginia was a perfect mate for him in many ways. She seemed made to order for Ansel: an intelligent, well-read woman who knew and loved Yosemite and its trails as well as he. Music was central to her life, and she was blessed with a fine voice. While Ansel encouraged Virginia’s musical aspirations, he also expected her to run the house. She worked during most of their marriage, giving birth to their two children without benefit of his presence and often raising them under similar conditions. She inherited a permanent home and studio for Ansel in his idea of heaven: Yosemite. She and the children lived in Yosemite, where they enjoyed an idyllic childhood provided mostly by a mother whose small, steady income could be counted on while their mercurial father flitted from coast to coast, assignment to assignment, and check to check. Ansel continued to base himself in San Francisco, a four-hour drive from his wife and children. While Virginia was his wife, she was not his muse. At times, Ansel required inspiration in addition to the American landscape that so filled him with wonder. Of course, this dream girl could never exist, at least for long, because no one woman could completely fill his unrealistic requirements.
As Ansel’s abilities, success, and fame grew, his emotional life traveled on a roller-coaster ride. Following a great achievement, such as his 1936 solo exhibition at Stieglitz’s An American Place, Ansel would plunge into despair driven by the deepest exhaustion. Ansel worked so frenetically that each episode ended in depression. It proved a lifelong pattern. Virginia was always there for him. She was his enabler; allowing him his tightrope walk, she the safety net. Ansel underestimated Virginia’s importance, for she was critical to his success.
Following Ansel’s death, Virginia enjoyed occasional travels. She rode the length of the Trans-Canadian Railroad with her granddaughter, Sarah. Virginia joined Jim and me for two weeks in England. Always supportive, she never acted bored by sitting through yet another of my lectures on Ansel. Her only declared wish on that British trip was to go to a pub that had a dartboard. We really tried, but I regret that we never found something as simple as that. Back in Carmel, Virginia continued their established daily routine for most of the next sixteen years. People still arrived at five for cocktails to be greeted by Virginia at the opaque, sliding-glass front door. At sunset, all stood at the west-facing picture window to hope for a glimpse of the green flash. Virginia was a stalwart supporter of the Carmel Bach Festival. Family and friends established the Virginia Best Adams Master Class Fund in her honor to allow fledgling opera singers to study with great professionals. Finally struck down by a broken hip, Virginia Rose Best Adams died on January 29, 2000, at the age of ninety-six, in the home Ansel had built in 1962 in the Carmel Highlands. She was not alone but surrounded by her very loving family.
Later that year, daughter Anne privately published a touching book of reminiscences by a number of Virginia’s children, grandchildren, and close friends. Illustrated with pictures of Virginia from her very rich and long life,
Remembering Virginia
was beautifully printed by Ansel’s own chosen printer, Dave Gardner.
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This is a gentle, small, and a bit reserved volume, completely reflective of the woman who had no wish to be in the limelight but every desire to support her husband.
Ansel could not have had finer children. Dr. Michael Adams retired from the Air National Guard in 1993 with the rank of major general and as deputy surgeon general of the United States Air Force for Air National Guard Affairs. He practiced internal medicine in Fresno, California, for twenty-five years, until 2000, and then volunteered his services to the University of California, San Francisco–Fresno campus. Ansel and Virginia’s Carmel house is now the home base for Michael and wife, Jeanne, leaving to travel the world and presenting occasional lectures on his famous father with a fondly personal lecture, “Ansel Adams: A Son’s Perspective.” Born and raised in Yosemite, Michael, a consummate outdoorsman, who especially enjoys skiing and hiking, confessed, “We had fun, but it wasn’t the typical childhood. My father was very different to my compatriots’ fathers. We never played ball or anything like that together. He wasn’t a fisherman, he wasn’t a hunter, he didn’t do a lot of physical activities other than the hiking.” He adds, “Sometimes I was embarrassed about what he wanted to do—he was rather outspoken about the environment, and he didn’t mind telling the National Park Service what he thought about how they were taking care of Yosemite.”
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From the perspective of eighty years, in 2013 Michael remembered, “It was a very different type of upbringing compared to my contemporaries at that time . . . I had a lot of experiences that were quite satisfying and wonderful.”
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“I’m in demand now [speaking on Ansel] and I enjoy doing it. I’m proud of my dad, and I can give a little bit of a twist to his experiences. I am proud to show him off.”
5
Michael and Jeanne bought the Mono Inn in 1996, on the shores of Mono Lake, not far from the eastern end of the Tioga Pass between Yosemite and the Owens Valley. Following years of working at the family gallery in Yosemite, their older child, Sarah, took over the inn’s restoration and management, turning the old run-down roadhouse into something better than it had ever been. Sarah retired to raise a family that numbers three daughters. The Historic Mono Inn, as it is now called, is still owned by the Adamses but leased out as a restaurant.
Son Matthew Adams is a great outdoorsman, like his father. He graduated from Pomona College and received his MBA from Washington University, St. Louis. He is the president and the family’s leader at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite (the former Best’s Studio). The gallery continues to offer weeklong photography workshops in the valley, the tradition Ansel began in 1940. More casually, visitors are invited to sign up for regularly scheduled half-day classes including the twice-weekly “In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams.”
Ansel and Virginia’s daughter, Anne Adams Helms, directed the other Adams family business, 5 Associates, to its position as the most important publisher of postcards and notecards of Ansel’s photographs. Anne’s second daughter, Alison Mayhew Jaques, has run what is now called Ansel Adams Museum Graphics since 1986. Alison has maintained her grandfather’s high reproduction standards in their fine-quality products. Alison is also a realtor and has two children. Sylvia Mayhew Desin, Anne’s youngest, has been married to Greg Desin for more than twenty-five years. Their daughter is in college and their son is serving in the Air Force. Like her older sister, Sylvia is also a realtor in northern California and is an active volunteer in their community.