Even Ansel Adams Had a Blind Spot

A long forgotten photographer named William Porterfield made this picture in 1905. But maybe he might be better known today if the F64 school hadn’t been so eager to declare pictorialism was dead

We all have a blind spot, both literally and metaphorically. Ansel Adams had one so big and powerful that he, Beaumont Newhall and a few others “disappeared” some very important and wonderful photographers from the history of photography. And in doing so they also helped “disappear” an important movement in photography, one called Pictorialism.