Authors: Mary Street Alinder
14
Helen LeConte, “Reminiscences of LeConte Family Outings, the Sierra Club, and Ansel Adams,” an oral history conduted in 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun.
15
Ansel selected the 1926 version of
East Vidette
for his first portfolio,
Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
, published in 1927, the project suggested and sponsored by Albert Bender in April 1926. A print of the 1925
East Vidette
is now in a private collection.
16
LeConte, “Reminiscences.” Helen remembered that Ansel was “a delightful companion . . . and what a good camper and a good worker and how delightful it was to travel through this country with him, because of course, his eye was so perceptive. He saw so much more than I did, and it made me see more.”
17
Ibid.
18
Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 30, 1925, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 25–27.
19
Dorothy Minty, interview with Nancy Newhall, June 23, 1947, CCP.
20
Ansel Adams, records of his music students, CCP.
21
Dorothy Minty interview, CCP.
22
Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, March 11, 1927, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 29–30.
23
Letters from Virginia Adams to Ansel Adams, April 1927, Virginia Adams personal collection. In 1989, Virginia told me that she had a number of letters from Ansel that I had never seen and asked if I would care to read them. Of course, I said yes. Although I did not make photocopies of them, she let me take notes. We had no idea these letters existed when we made the selection for
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images.
24
Virginia and Ansel Adams,
Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley
(San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1940), 18.
25
Ansel claimed that
Monolith
had been made on April 17, 1927. When I subsequently learned that April 17 that year was Easter, and the romantic day that Ansel and Virginia had spent in Carmel, I knew he had been mistaken.
In
The Eloquent Light
, Nancy Newhall stated that
Monolith
was first reproduced on April 16, 1927, in the
Stockton Record.
The kindly central reference librarian, Sjaan VandenBroeder, of the Stockton Public Library, sent me a photocopy of the article in question (see n. 31 below). Illustrating the story are four photographs, all credited to Arnold Williams, not Ansel Adams. One is a near twin of Ansel’s
Monolith
, but Williams’s version has slightly different cropping, and the sky is very pale, certainly not the beneficiary of a red filter. A comparison of a vintage print of
Monolith
with the newspaper clipping reveals that Williams set up his tripod and five-by-seven-inch view camera a few feet to the left of Ansel’s. Based on the date of the
Stockton Record
article,
Monolith
must have been made before April 16. The Sunday immediately before, the tenth, is most likely, since it appears that Sunday was their regular hiking day.
26
Ansel Adams, “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome,” in
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 3–5.
27
My gratitude goes to Dr. Donald W. Olson, Texas State University, San Marcos, who realized that our print of
Half Dome
must have been made from Glacier Point, not the Diving Board.
28
I bought this print,
Half Dome
, at that 2012 auction. It came with an impeccable provenance; Ansel had given it to Albert Bender who then gave it to Alma Lavenson, the daughter of a close friend. Alma, a noted amateur photographer, was invited to show four prints in the first Group
f
.64 exhibition in 1932 at the M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco.
Half Dome
came to auction directly from her estate.
29
Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder,
Ansel Adams: An Autobiography
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 61–63, and 74; and Adams,
Examples
, 3–5.
30
I am grateful to “the” Yosemite historian, Shirley Sargent, for her memory of Arnold Williams and his Yosemite connection.
31
James V. Lloyd quoting Arnold Williams, “Photographic Party Climbs Diving Board, Unusual Views Obtained from Side of Half Dome Near Top,”
Stockton Record
, April 16, 1927, “Out-O-Doors” section, 1.
32
Ibid.
33
Snapshot of Ansel Adams and Virginia Best, A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 74.
34
A. Adams,
Examples
, 3–5.
35
A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 74–75. Also, photograph by Arnold Williams, “Virginia Best Standing Behind the ‘Diving Board,’” to illustrate his article “World’s Highest Diving Board,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 18, 1927,
36
Ansel Adams,
On the Heights
, reproduced in A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 75.
37
This short film,
Ansel Adams and Friends Climb Diving Board Rock in Yosemite,
can be viewed on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website at http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/114.
38
Edward Carpenter,
Angel’s Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and Its Relation to Life
(London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), 42–45, 64. Ansel had not yet seen
Camera Work
, so he could not be familiar with de Zayas’s statement from 1911.
39
The first exposure is reproduced in A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 76, and also in Ansel Adams with Robert Baker,
The Negative
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 4.
40
A. Adams with R. Baker, “Visualization and Negative Values,” in
The Negative
, 1–7.
41
Reproduced, with the story of its making, in A. Adams,
Examples
, 48–51.
42
Frederick R. Karl,
Modern and Modernism: The Sovereignty of the Artist 1885
–
1925
(New York: Atheneum, 1985), xii.
43
Edward Weston, “Random Notes on Photography,” Beaumont Newhall,
Photography: Essays Images
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980), 223–227.
44
Ansel Adams, “The New Photography,”
Modern Photography 1934
–
35: The Studio Annual of Camera Art
(London and New York: The Studio Publications, 1934), 14.
45
Special dispatch to the
Chronicle
, dateline Yosemite, April 24, “Party’s Trek from Verdant Valley Takes Seven Hours,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 27, 1927.
46
Photograph at Glacier Point by Arnold Williams, a copy given to me by Dr. Donald W. Olson, Texas State University, San Marcos. As cited earlier, in April 1927, newspaper articles described two hikes by Ansel, Virginia, Cedric, and a couple of other friends, one about their April 10 trip to the Diving Board and the other an April 24 Outing to Glacier Point via the Four-Mile Trail. It is hard to believe that Ansel made the
Half Dome
that we know was taken from Glacier Point, on that April 24 trek, after he had already created
Monolith
.
Half Dome
would immediately pale beside
Monolith
. Perhaps Ansel made the negative of
Half Dome
a year earlier, in April 1926 soon after Bender’s offer of the portfolio. His gift of
Half Dome
for Bender was made on the same paper he chose for the portfolio, printed, it would seem, in 1927 before April 10. April 3, 1927 is a long shot for the making of the
Half Dome
negative, because he clearly went to Glacier Point on April 24, probably the first to arrive there that year, making it highly unlikely that he had gone even earlier.
47
LeConte, “Reminiscences,” 97.
48
N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 50.
49
A. Adams, “Conversations,” 97. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
50
A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 82–83.
51
Ansel Easton Adams,
Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
(San Francisco: Jean Chambers Moore, 1927).
52
J. N. LeConte, “Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras,”
Sierra Club Bulletin
13 (February 1928): 96.
53
Conversation between Ansel Adams and the author.
54
Ansel Adams, Record of Expenses, CCP.
55
Virginia Adams to Ansel Adams, April 1927, Virginia Adams personal collection.
56
Ibid. Her letters to Ansel stand in sharp contrast to his to her. Hers are full of emotions, passion, and yearning, while his describe his achievements and plans for the future.
57
Dorothy Minty interview, CCP.
58
Letter from Olive Adams to Mary Bray, January 2, 1928, Virginia Adams personal collection.
59
Dorothy Minty interview, CCP. Bacon became a noted composer and conducted the San Jose Symphony in his own
Elegy for Ansel Adams
soon after Ansel’s death.
60
N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 50.
61
A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 100–101.
62
Excerpt from Mariposa, California, newspaper clipping, “Miss Virginia Best Claimed as Bride,” CCP.
63
Virginia Adams, interview with the author, February 1, 1988.
64
Ibid.
65
Sierra Club Bulletin
, February 1928; Virginia Adams, interviews with James Alinder, August 26–27, 1994. Virginia Adams recalled that Ansel never made motion pictures, though she thought he would have if someone had asked him to. Virginia, however, did use a movie camera, and carried one on the hike that resulted in
Monolith.
66
A. Adams, “Conversations,” 585. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
67
N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 62.
5. SOUTHWEST
1
Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1978, 72–73.
2
Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder,
Ansel Adams: An Autobiography
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 85–87.
3
Ansel Adams,
Robinson Jeffers
, frontispiece to Robinson Jeffers,
Poems by Robinson Jeffers
(San Francisco: Grabhorn Press for The Book Club of California, 1928). 310 copies were produced.
4
George Waters,
Ansel Adams 1902
–
1984: A Tribute by His Roxburghe Club Friends
(San Francisco: Roxburghe Club, 1984).