Ansel Adams
American, 1902-1984
Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California, 1944 ca., printed 1970
gelatin silver print
SBMA, Gift of Margaret Weston
2005.76.2
Ansel Adams, photographing in Yosemite National Park from atop his car in about 1942. The camera Adams used was a “view camera”, in which the photographer views the image on a ground-glass screen in the rear. To minimize outside light from reflecting off the screen, the photographer uses a dark cloth to cover both the body of the camera and his head. Thus the reference to Adams going “under the cloth”. The photo shows the camera and Adams on top of a platform, which he attached to his vehicles to give a stable mounting for the camera and tripod. This was the type of setup that he used for taking “Winter Sunrise”.
Perhaps the best description of the photograph and the process of making it are found in the words of Wallace Stegner, a long-time Adams friend and professor at Stanford University:
“...Adams did not grab the image when he came upon it. He studied it, visualizing the finished print. He estimated how it would appear in various directional light. Then he went to dinner and to bed.”
“In the chilly predawn blackness of the next morning, he came back. As he waited, clear grey sourceless light grew until it showed the meadow with the shadowy horses, the mottled foothill, the impressive loom of the Sierra fault block. He set up the camera and went under the cloth; then he came out and waited. Eventually, the sun, breaking over the White Mountains to the eastward, lit and burned like a laser beam on the highest Sierra peak. He watched the pinkish light flood downward until nearly the whole face of the range was blazing with it. He went under the cloth and came out again and waited. Then another laser beam slipped past the eastern mountains and tangled itself in the tops of the cottonwoods in the middle ground. The roll of foothills is still in shadow, the range coldly alight. Nearly at his own level, the little smolder of sun grew in the cottonwood branches. He went under the cloth and watched awhile, and came out yet again. By then, the light had burst past the leftward cottonwoods and was brightening the other trees and a patch of meadow along the creek farther to the right. There was a grazing horse there. The light pooled behind him, turning the horse into a black cutout. Adams went under the cloth again, waited for the precise instant, and clicked the shutter.”
RESEARCH PAPER
One of the greatest interpreters of the western American landscape of the 20th century, Ansel Adams took this picture in the winter of 1944, during a time that he was commissioned by the U.S. government to photograph the Japanese internment camp at nearby Manzanar, in the Owens Valley of California. Taken at sunrise, it has been one of Adams’ most recognized images. The SBMA print was made in approximately 1970 from the original negative.
Ansel Adams was a master craftsman, both with a camera and also in the darkroom. The rich blacks and range of grays in this print were certainly enhanced in the darkroom by carefully selecting the aperture of the projector lens, the type of paper for printing and by manipulating the light as it fell on the paper. It should be noted that, in the actual scene, there is a whitewashed “LP” (standing for Lone Pine High School) on the black hill in the middle ground. This was meticulously removed from every print of this negative by “spotting”, using a fine brush to color black dye on the white “LP”.
In his photographs, Adams refused to merely record the scene in front of the camera lens. Instead, he attempted to capture his emotional response to the scene. To accomplish this, he visualized the finished picture before releasing the shutter and carried out necessary controls of exposure, development, and presentation to translate that vision into a finished print.
According to him, “The difference between the creative approach and the factual approach is one of purpose, sensitivity, and the ability to visualize an emotionally and aesthetically exciting image....The most precious element is the individual concept and spirit which must not be trapped in conventionalized routines and standards.” The sharp focus and extraordinary range of tones, from the rich black of the mid-range hills (on which detail can still be seen), to the snow-covered Sierras (which would have been bright white in the actual scene), to the sunlight illuminating the trees in the center of the image, are a lasting tribute to Adams’ ability to envision and produce a photograph that contains maximum visual and emotional impact.
Biographical Notes
Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902. His first experience with a camera came at age 14, when he accompanied his parents on a trip to Yosemite National park. His father gave him a Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie camera, and he spent four weeks taking snapshots. When the family returned home, he continued to take pictures and went to work part-time for a neighbor who had a photo finishing operation. As a result, he developed a lifelong interest in mastering all aspects of darkroom chemistry and photographic technique in general. Largely self-taught, he joined a local camera club and over the years, met and exchanged ideas with local Bay Area photographers. He also returned each summer to Yosemite.
During his trips to Yosemite, he met Virginia Best, whose parents operated a painting and photography gallery in the park. Eventually, Ansel and Virginia were married, and, for many years, the couple lived in Yosemite each summer and returned to San Francisco for the rest of the year. This association with the Best Studio gave him an outlet for selling his photographs and his residence in the park gave him maximum opportunity to photograph the landscape in all seasons and under varying weather conditions.
Although trained in his youth as a concert pianist, Ansel Adams eventually decided to pursue photography as a full-time career. His affinity for the Yosemite deepened over time, until he made photographing the scenery in the park and the Sierra his major focus. Each summer, he led backpacking hikes into the Yosemite wilderness, photographing and giving photography lessons to his fellow hikers. Finally, in 1926, Albert Bender, a well-to-do San Francisco insurance broker and patron of the arts,
arranged with Adams to produce a portfolio of his prints of the Sierra and Yosemite. Priced at $50, the edition of prints was sold to Bender’s friends and associates. It was Adams’ first commercial success.
During the next five decades, his reputation as a master photographer steadily grew. Aided by ca Guggenheim grant, he amassed an outstanding collection of photographs of the western American landscape. During this period, he also taught, wrote, and accepted many commercial assignments, ranging from magazine illustrations to advertising.
In the early 1960’s Ansel and Virginia built a new home in Carmel, California. Complete with a custom-designed darkroom, this became their permanent home. Ansel continued his teaching, writing and photography, concentrating on making new prints of many of his old negatives, to satisfy a demand for his work by a public who was becoming increasingly aware of the power of his images. He died in 1984, in Carmel.
Beginning in the 1920’s, Ansel Adams had been an active member of the Sierra Club, and a long-time member of its Board of Directors. His photographs, writings, and testimony before congressional committees proved to be a potent tool for the environmental movement in influencing legislation to create Kings Canyon National park, several national monuments, and in preserving wilderness areas. After his death, to commemorate his contributions to the environmental cause, Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel formally dedicated Mount Ansel Adams, on Yosemite’s eastern border, in August 1985.
Prepared for SBMA Docent Council by Cliff Hauenstein 2007
Footnotes
1. Quoted from the Foreword in Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974, published by
The New York Graphic Society, 1974, p. 18.
2. From Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, published by University of
California Press, 1995, p. 122
3. Quote by Ansel Adams, Camera and Lens, published by Morgan and Morgan,
1970, p. 14-15
4. Colorama photo reproduced from Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, p.
305. Unfortunately, the image was published in black and white, instead of the
original color.
References
1. Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974, Boston, New York Graphic Society, 1974
2. Johnathan Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape, Berkley,
University of California Press, 1995
3. Ansel Adams, Camera and Lens, Hastings-on-Hudson NY, Morgan & Morgan,
1970
4. Alinder, Mary Stewart, Ansel Adams, a biography, New York, H.Holt &
Co.,1996
4. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams -- Contains general
information about Adams’ life and career.
5. Masters of Photography, http://www.masters-of- photography.com/A/adams/-
Good source of biographical and critical information and a collection of well-
known images by Adams.
Undated photo of Adams