ansel adams

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ANSEL ADAMS ANSEL ADAMS (Feb. 20 1902 Apr. 22, 1984), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life.

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Page 1: Ansel Adams

ANSEL ADAMS

ANSEL ADAMS (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22,

1984), photographer and environmentalist,

was born in San Francisco, California, the

son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a

businessman, and Olive Bray. When Adams

was only four, an aftershock of the great

earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the

ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly

marking him for life.

Page 2: Ansel Adams

TIMELINE OF HIS LIFE1902 - Ansel Easton Adams born on February 20, at 114

Maple Street, San Francisco, the only child of Olive and

Charles

1915 - Despises the regimentation of a regular education,

and is taken out of school. For that year, his father buys

him a season pass to the Panama-Pacific Exposition,

which he visits nearly every day. Private tutors provide

further instruction.

1916: Family Trip to Yosemite, California.

1925: Decides to become a pianist. Buys a grand piano.

1927: First acknowledged photograph.

1940 - Teaches first Yosemite workshop, the U. S. Camera

Photographic Forum, in Yosemite with Edward Weston.

1953 he collaborated with Dorothea Lange on a Life

commission for a photo essay on the Mormons in Utah

In 1962 Adams moved to Carmel, California, where in

1967 he was instrumental in the foundation of the Friends

of Photography

1984 - Dies April 22 of heart failure aggravated by cancer

Page 3: Ansel Adams

CHILDHOOD

An only child, Adams was born when his

mother was nearly forty. His relatively

elderly parents, affluent family history,

and the live-in presence of his mother’s

maiden sister and aged father all

combined to create an environment that

was decidedly Victorian and both socially

and emotionally conservative. Natural

shyness and a certain intensity of genius,

coupled with the dramatically

“earthquaked” nose, caused Adams to

have problems fitting in at

school. Ultimately, he managed to earn

what he termed a “legitimizing diploma”

from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private

School — perhaps equivalent to having

completed the eighth grade.

Page 4: Ansel Adams

HIS INTEREST IN MUSIC AND

PHOTOGRAPHY

When Adams was twelve he taught himself to play the piano and read music. Soon he was taking lessons, and the ardent pursuit of music became his substitute for formal schooling. For the next dozen years the piano was Adams’s primary occupation and, by 1920, his intended profession. Although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano brought substance, discipline, and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography.

If Adams’s love of nature was nurtured in the Golden Gate, his life was, in his words, “colored and modulated by the great earth gesture” of the Yosemite Sierra (Adams, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, p. xiv). He spent substantial time there every year from 1916 until his death. From his first visit, Adams was transfixed and transformed. He began using the Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie his parents had given him. He hiked, climbed, and explored, gaining self-esteem and self-confidence. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent the first of four summers in Yosemite Valley, as “keeper” of the club’s LeConte Memorial Lodge. He became friends with many of the club’s leaders, who were founders of America’s nascent conservation movement. He met his wife, Virginia Best, in Yosemite; they were married in 1928. The couple had two children.

Page 5: Ansel Adams

START OF CAREER

• The Sierra Club was vital to Adams’s early success as a

photographer. His first published photographs and writings

appeared in the club’s 1922 Bulletin, and he had his first one

man exhibition in 1928 at the club’s San Francisco

headquarters. Adams began to realize that he could earn

enough to survive — indeed, that he was far more likely to

prosper as a photographer than as a concert pianist

• Nineteen twenty seven was the pivotal year of Adams’s life

Bender’s friendship, encouragement, and tactful financial

support changed Adams’s life dramatically. His creative

energies and abilities as a photographer blossomed, and he

began to have the confidence and wherewithal to pursue his

dreams. Indeed, Bender’s benign patronage triggered the

transformation of a journeyman concert pianist into the artist

whose photographs, as critic Abigail Foerstner wrote in the

Chicago Tribune (Dec. 3, 1992)

Page 6: Ansel Adams

MIDDLE LIFE

After a prolonged and

sometimes painful courtship,

Ansel Adams and Virginia Best

were married in January 1929,

and for the first two years of

their marriage, he wavered

between his two possible career

choices, music and photography.

After viewing the wonderful work

of a new friend, photographer Paul

Strand, Adams decided on his

course. Happily for all those who

would enjoy his work in the

future, he would be a

professional photographer

Page 7: Ansel Adams

FIRST GRAND EXHIBITION

March 1933 was an important time for Adams. It was then that he

met the renowned photographer and patron, Alfred Stieglitz,

husband of Georgia O'Keefe, owner of An American Place gallery, and

a powerful influence on artists of that time. Stieglitz was favorably

impressed with the young photographer and his work, and mounted

an exhibition for him in November of 1936. Adams wrote in his 1985

autobiography "Steiglitz taught me what became my first

commandment: "Art is the affirmation of life."

Page 8: Ansel Adams

NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY AND CONSERVATION

From 1944 through 1958, Adams won three

Guggenheim grants to photograph the

national parks. Along with Edward Weston ,

Ansel Adams founded the f/64 group and

developed zone exposure to get maximum

tonal range from black-and-white film.

From the moment Ansel Adams discovered

the beauty of the wilderness as a young

boy, he dedicated his life to exploring,

photographing, and preserving Yosemite

Valley, the High Sierra and the vanishing

beauty of the American western frontier. His

most passionate and inspiring photographs

are of the land he loved and strived to

protect.

Page 9: Ansel Adams

ADAMS’ INTEREST IN PRESERVING

NATURE

Ansel Adams' art and his urgent

concern was to preserve the

wilderness for a future held "in a

delicate and precarious grasp." The

grandeur and subtlety of his

photographs communicate in a voice

that is both intimate and profound

Adams' summons to share and protect

the beauty of the natural world.

From Maine to the remote peaks of

Alaska, Ansel Adams' photographs

captured the elusive subtleties of light

and atmosphere and preserved the

moment of witnessing an unspoiled

wilderness for everyone.

Page 10: Ansel Adams

WORK WITH COLOR FILM

Adams did not work exclusively in black and white—he experimented with color, as well. A few examples of his color work are available in the online archive of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. There are two main reasons, according to an expert source, why Adams preferred black and white.

The first was that he felt color could be distracting, and could therefore divert an artist’s attention away from achieving his full potential when taking a photograph. Adams actually claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography”

Page 11: Ansel Adams

DEATH AND LEGACY

• In September 1983, Adams was confined to his bed for four weeks after leg surgery to remove a tumor.[80] Adams died on April 22, 1984, in the ICU at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at the age of 82 from a heart attack. He was survived by his wife, two children (Michael, born August 1933, and Anne, born 1935) and five grandchildren.

• Publishing rights for most of Adams's photographs are now handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. An archive of Ansel Adams's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Page 12: Ansel Adams

AWARDS• Adams received a number of awards during his

lifetime and

posthumously, and there have been a few awards

named for him.[81]

• Adams received a Doctorate of Arts From

both Harvard and Yale universities. [82]

• He was awarded the Conservation Service Award

by

the Department of the Interior in 1968,

• A Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980,

• The Sierra Club John Muir Award in 1963

• Adams was presented with the Hasselblad

Award in 1981. [85]

• The Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for

Conservation

Photography was established in 1971,

• The Ansel Adams Award for Conservation was

established in 1980 by The Wilderness Society.[86]

Page 13: Ansel Adams

NOTABLE PHOTOGRAPHS

Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927.

Rose and Driftwood, San Francisco, California, 1932.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, 1937.

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1940.[87]

Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1960.

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1944.

Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958.

El Capitan, Winter Sunrise, 1968

Page 14: Ansel Adams

SOME WORKSMountain Pine, Mono Creek

Leaf, Glacier Bay National Monument

Oak Tree, Snowstorm

Fern Springs, Dusk

Page 15: Ansel Adams

Dogwood

Blossoms * New

Acquisition *

White Branches, Mono Lake

Page 16: Ansel Adams

TECHNICAL

BOOKS

Making a Photograph, 1935.

Camera and Lens: The Creative Approach, 1948.

The Negative: Exposure and Development, 1949.

The Print: Contact Printing and Enlarging, 1950.

Natural Light Photography, 1952.

Artificial Light Photography, 1956.

Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, 1983.

The Camera, 1995.

The Negative, 1995.

The Print, 1995.

Page 17: Ansel Adams

PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOKS

The High Sierra: Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, 1927. (Jean Chambers Moore,

Publisher)

Taos Pueblo, 1930.

Sierra Nevada the John Muir Trail, 1938.

Born Free and Equal, 1944.

This is the American Earth, 1960, (with Nancy Newhall) Sierra Club Books. (reprinted

by Bulfinch,

These We Inherit: The Parklands of America, 1962. (with Nancy Newhall)

The Eloquent Light, 1963. (unfinished biography of Adams by Nancy Newhall)

Yosemite Valley", 1967. (45 plates in B&W edited by Nancy Newhall, published by 5

Associates, Redwood City, California.)

The Tetons and the Yellowstone, 1970.

Ansel Adams, 1972.

Page 18: Ansel Adams

THE TETONS AND THE SNAKE RIVER (1942)

Page 19: Ansel Adams

THANK YOU

Akashdeep Ramnaney

Class - IX - E

Roll Number -20