Ansel Adams’ Biography
The imposing cliffs, the glimmering, white snow, the lone trees, and the dark night sky… which iconic photograph do you imagine? One of the most famous photographs that has captured these scenes is Ansel Adams’ Monolith the Face of Half-Dome. Now you might be wondering who is this legendary photographer?
Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 — April 22, 1984) was born in San Francisco, California, the son of businessman Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray. Adams, the grandson of a prosperous lumber baron, grew up in a home nestled among the Golden Gate shoreline. An only child, Adams was born when his mother was almost forty years old. His rather elderly parents, rich family heritage, and the live-in presence of his mother’s maiden sister and elderly father all contributed to a highly Victorian, cultural, and emotionally conservative upbringing.
Adams began learning to play the piano when he was twelve years old. Soon, he started taking lessons. His passion for music became an alternative to formal education. For the following 10 years, Adams’ primary occupation was music; by 1920, his chosen vocation was the piano. Although he eventually abandoned music in favor of photography, the piano provided substance, discipline, and structure to his turbulent and unpredictable upbringing. Furthermore, the meticulous training and fine technique demanded of a musician molded his visual style, as well as his renowned publications and photography courses.
Adams’ popularity shot up in the early 1930s, spurred by his talent as well as by his exuberant energy and action. He moved to New York City for the first time in 1933, to see photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whose work and ideology Adams respected and whose lifestyle of dedication to the profession he copied. Their friendship was passionate, and their correspondence was regular, detailed, and perceptive. Despite being a deeply Western character, Adams spent a great amount of time in New York throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The Stieglitz group played an important part in Ansel Adams’ creative life.
Adams founded a Pageant of Photography in 1940, which has since grown to become the largest and most significant photography exhibition in the West with millions of attendees.
During 1940 and 1941, Adams and his wife created a children’s book, the very popular Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley. He also taught photography in Detroit by holding seminars. In 1941, Adams began his first real teaching job which included instructing military photographers, at the Art Center School of Los Angeles, known today as the Art Center College of Design.
In 1952, Adams co-founded the magazine Aperture, which aimed to be a professional publication of photography, showcasing the greatest practitioners and the most recent advancements. He also contributed to Arizona Highways, a photo-rich travel newspaper. His piece about Mission San Xavier del Bac was expanded into a paperback in 1954.
Adams began his yearly classes at Yosemite in 1955. They ran until 1981, attracting tens of thousands of pupils. He continued with commercial work for another twenty years until becoming an advisor for Polaroid Corporation, established by his great friend Edwin Land.
He took thousands of images with Polaroid products, the most notable of which being El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise (1968). The 6x6 cm medium format Hasselblad was his camera of choice for the final twenty years of his life, with Moon and Half Dome (1960) being his favorite image produced with the Hasselblad. What Majestic Word, Adams’ fourth portfolio, was published in 1963 and devoted to the remembrance of his Sierra Club comrade Russell Varian, who perished in 1959.
Ansel Adams has captured many scenes of life, however, the most important picture he took was Monolith the Face of Half Dome as it was his first fully visualized photograph. The Monolith, taken in 1927, was the beginning of his career. However, what comes next could be equally as important. The same year that he photographed the Monolith, Albert M. Bender took Ansel under his wing. The day after the two met, Bender immediately started helping Adams produce and publish his first portfolio: Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras.
Once again in 1927, Adams befriended photographer Edward Weston. They were more significant to one another as friends and coworkers. The legendary Group f/64, formed in 1932, was built on the acknowledged excellence of Weston and the vibrant energy of Adams. Despite being loosely structured and somewhat short-lived, Group f/64 propelled the new West Coast idea of direct photography to national prominence and impact. The DeYoung Museum in San Francisco quickly mounted an exhibition of f/64, along with providing Adams with his first one-man museum exposition.
Adams is most known for developing the Zone System along with Fred Archer. The Zone System is a method of understanding and controlling every level of light and darkness to the photographer’s benefit. Splitting up the gradient of light into zones, this system assists photographers’ understanding of light. From pure black to pure white, there is a grayscale composed of 10 sections; some people also say 9 or 11. Exquisite micro-contrast is a crucial factor in a photo’s quality and beauty, so if something in real life is pure black then the camera should capture that as pure black. If the camera is not capturing light perfectly a photographer can fix the light exposure using the Zone System. A photographer can alter the settings on his camera or go into post-production to alter blacks and whites to appear subtle and life-like.
Ansel Adams was a photographer ahead of his time. He captured photographs from the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion National Parks, and numerous other parks, helping people understand the true majesty of the national parks, thus ensuring their preservation for all to enjoy.
