Authors: Mary Street Alinder
41
N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 124.
42
Ansel Adams to Virginia Adams, January 17, 1936, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 80–81.
43
Ansel Adams, “The Meaning of Exposure: Practical Exposure,”
Zeiss Magazine
3 (June 1937): 107–109, 120; Ansel Adams, “Landscape Photography: Exposure and Development,”
Zeiss Magazine
3 (December 1937): 236–237, 243.
44
Louise Hewlett, “The 1936 Outing,”
Sierra Club Bulletin
22 (February 1937): 58–68.
45
Ibid., 60.
46
Reproduced in Gray,
An American Place
, pl. 31.
47
Ibid., pl. 38.
48
Ibid., 22. Agfa Brovira was one of the last pure bromide papers to be manufactured, the silver mixed with bromide rather than a mix of silver-bromide and silver-chloride.
49
Mrs. Patricia English Farbman, interview with the author, May 17, 1994, tape recording.
50
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, October 11, 1936, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 84.
51
Stieglitz presented solo exhibitions of his own work in 1932, with 117 prints and his first solo show in eight years, and another in 1934–35. Greenough,
My Faraway One
, 621–622; and Whelan,
Alfred Stieglitz
, 524.
52
Gray,
An American Place
, 38.
53
Howard DeVree, “A Reviewer’s Notebook: Among New Exhibitions,”
New York Times
, November 1936, sec. 10, p. 9.
54
Gray,
An American Place
, 29.
55
Alfred Stieglitz to Ansel Adams, December 16, 1936, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 88–89.
56
The White Tombstone
,
Laurel Hill Cemetery
,
San Francisco
,
California
, reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 85.
57
Ansel Adams to Virginia Adams, November 11, 1936, transcribed by Nancy Newhall, CCP.
58
Ansel Adams, “My First Ten Weeks with a Contax,”
Camera Craft
43, no. 1 (January 1936): 14–20.
59
Comment attributed to Dorothy Norman. Sue Davidson Lowe,
Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983), 302.
60
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, November 27–28, 1936, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 85–88.
9. LOSING HEART
1
Mrs. Patricia English Farbman, interview with the author, May 17, 1994, tape recording.
2
Patsy English was paid $175 from August 13 to October 31, 1936. Ansel and Virginia Adams, check register, August 10, 1934–April 2, 1937, CCP.
3
Farbman interview, 1994.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid. In 1981, Virginia informed my husband, Jim, and me of the abortion.
6
Mrs. Farbman learned just how similar they were when she read
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images
,
1916
–
1984
published in 1988, four years after Ansel’s death. Out of consideration for Virginia, her letters were chosen for publication, to the exclusion of the ones to Patsy.
Mrs. Farbman gave fifty-two of Ansel’s letters to her, written in 1936–1938, to the Center for Creative Photography. Ansel wrote eleven letters to her during November 1936 alone.
7
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, December 15, 1936, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
8
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, December 1936, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Dante Hospital was located at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Broadway in San Francisco.
9
Farbman interview, 1994. Patsy English Farbman died in San Francisco in 2010. She was ninety-six years old. Nathan Farbman died in 1988 at the age of eighty-one.
10
Ansel Adams to Cedric Wright [late December 1936], in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds.,
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images
,
1916
–
1984
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 92–93.
11
This exact print was sold at auction in October 2013 at Swann Auction Galleries.
12
Robinson Jeffers, “Rock and Hawk,”
Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems by Robinson Jeffers,
ed. Robert Hass (New York: Random House, 1987).
13
Patricia English Farbman, interview with the author, September 7, 1995; Adams to Stieglitz, December 1936, Yale University.
14
Farbman interview, 1994.
15
Ansel Adams to Cedric Wright [late December 1936], ibid.
16
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, January 29, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
17
Ansel and Virginia Adams, check register, August 10, 1934–April 2, 1937, CCP.
18
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, February 10, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
19
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, February 17, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
20
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, March 3, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University. They lived at 2730 Buena Vista Way.
21
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, March 21, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
22
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, January 3, 1937, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
It seems likely that Ansel’s parents or Albert Bender picked up the tab for Dante Hospital, as Ansel and Virginia’s check register for that time records only one payment of $15 from them. They did pay St. Francis Hospital a total of $209.80, with three checks dated between February 2, 1937, and March 30, 1937. Adams check register, CCP.
23
Notes from interview with Virginia Adams by Nancy Newhall, May 12, 1947, CCP.
24
Virginia Adams, interview with the author, May 17, 1988.
25
Ibid.
26
Farbman interview, 1994.
27
Ibid.
28
Edward Steichen,
The Family of Man
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1955).
29
Farbman interview, 1994.
30
Nancy Newhall,
The Eloquent Light
(Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 134.
31
Shirley Sargent,
Yosemite & Its Innkeepers
(Yosemite: Flying Spur Press, 1975), 82–83.
32
Ibid, 44–45. Don Tresidder was the president of Stanford University from 1943 to 1948, when he suddently died at the age of fifty-four of a heart attack.
33
Edwin Kiester, Jr., “A Christmas That Never Was,”
Modern Maturity
, December 1991–January 1992, 30–34, 88–91.
34
Shirley Sargent,
The Ahwahnee Hotel
(Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1990), 40–41.
35
Andrea Fulton,
The Bracebridge Dinner
(Yosemite: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1983), 7.
36
Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder,
Ansel Adams: An Autobiography
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 182–183.
37
Donald B. Tresidder to Ansel Adams, November 18, 1929, Yosemite National Park Research Library (hereinafter cited as YNPRL).
38
Fulton,
The Bracebridge Dinner
, 31–33.
39
Ibid., 33–35. Ansel finally retired from the Bracebridge in 1973, having missed only the years of World War II and two occasions when winter flooding interfered. The Bracebridge Dinner has become so popular that seats can only be obtained through a public lottery.
40
Life
5, no. 26 (December 26, 1938), cover, 16.
41
Ansel Adams to Donald B. Tresidder, November 1, 1929, YNPRL.
42
Donald Tresidder to Ansel Adams, November 18, 1929, YNPRL.
43
Sargent,
Yosemite & Its Innkeepers
, 119–121.
44
Ansel Adams to Virginia Adams, February 28, 1930, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 42–45; Ansel Adams, “Ski-Experience,”
Sierra Club Bulletin
16 (February 1931): 44–46, plus six photographic reproductions.
45
Tresidder’s original set of ski pictures by Ansel is in the collection of the Museum of Art, Stanford University. Reproductions can be seen in “Ski-Experience,”
Sierra Club Bulletin
, February 1931; A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 187; and M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 43.
46
Records of Yosemite Park and Curry Company, YNPRL.
47
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, 375.
48
Robert Silberman, “Scaling the Sublime: Ansel Adams, the Kodak Colorama and ‘The Large Print Idea’” in Michael Read, ed.,
Ansel Adams: New Light
(San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993), 33–41; Lincoln Kirstein and Julien Levy,
Murals by American Painters and Photographers
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1932).
49
Richard Whelan,
Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 537.
50
A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 187.
51
Ansel Adams, “Photo-Murals,”
U.S. Camera
1, no. 12 (November 1940), 52–53, 61–62, 71–72. Ansel probably made a total of thirteen screen. Most were composed of three panels, but a few were composed of four or five panels. The height of the screens varied from about five-and-one-half-feet tall to six-and-a-half feet.
52
Ansel Adams to Donald B. Tresidder, July 3, 1938, YNPRL.
53
Ibid.; and Virginia Adams to Stanley Plumb, August 29, 1938, YNPRL.
54
Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, November 12, 1937, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 101–103.
55
Ansel Adams to Yosemite Park and Curry Company, November 21, 1938, YNPRL.
56
Donald B. Tresidder to Stanley Plumb, August 15, 1938, YNPRL.