The Great Ansel Adams

The fact that Ansel Adams's works, though landscape, black-and-white photographs, are still so popular and appreciated in contemporary society reveals much about our current generation, and perhaps reveals what we most lack and desire.

Tetons and Snake River

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and social activist whose black and white landscape photographs have maintained their presence and popularity in modern culture. Adams co-developed the Zone System, which is a process of determining proper exposure and adjustment of the contrast in a print. This process is responsible for Adams’s images’ characteristic depth and clarity. In addition, Adams preferred to use large-format cameras, despite the labor they incurred, because of their high resolution and resulting sharpness (Alinder). Furthermore, Adams advocated for visualization, or the practice of planning an image and its aesthetic and mechanical elements before taking a photograph (not unlike the approaches we have used for this class).

Clearing Storm, Sonoma County Hills

Adams photographed both close-ups and large forms, like mountains and factories. When in the 1930s many other photographers adopted the opinion that “they had a social obligation to reveal the harsh times of the Depression through their art,” Adams began to use his artistic capacities on behalf of wildlife preservation (Alinder). The infringement upon the natural settings of Yosemite National Park in particular inspired many of Adams’s shots. The next decade, Adams’s contracted with the federal government to photograph other national parks, reservations, and other similar locations. During this time, Adams discovered another social crisis arising in American culture: the confinement of Japanese Americans. This conflict became a new subject for Adams’s photography in addition to his other various photographic subjects as determined by the Department of the Interior. 

Northern California Coast Redwoods

Though he used his images to advocate for several different causes, Adams has one constant, clear approach to making his arguments: the simplicity and clarity of his photographs. Adams spent his entire career perfecting the mechanical tools he used to develop his images, simply so that his images were as sharp, as deep, and as profound as the live views themselves. He realized that the scenes he sought to share with others were powerful enough in and of themselves, so his task was purely to convey them as realistically as possible. 

Alinder, Mary. Ansel Adams: A Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996. Print.