Ansel Adams
Photographer
1902–1984
“I have a far-flung reputation now which I am anxious to cash in on in a thoroughly dignified (and profitable) manner,” photographer Ansel Adams wrote in a letter to Arizona Highways Editor Raymond Carlson in the 1950s. His first photograph, a color study of Monument Valley, was published in our pages in 1946, when he was already well established as a landscape photographer.
As a child growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Adams was drawn to nature and took frequent long walks along Lobos Creek and down to Baker Beach, according to biographer William Turnage. And while Adams was a talented pianist who intended to turn music into a career, the time he spent exploring the Yosemite area with the Kodak No. 1 Brownie box camera his parents gifted him transformed his life’s passion. His first published photographs appeared in the Sierra Club’s 1922 bulletin. And according to Turnage, “By 1934, Adams had been elected to the club’s board of directors and was well established as both the artist of the Sierra Nevada and the defender of Yosemite.”
Adams perfected his craft and became acquainted with Edward Weston, Mary Austin, Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz; the latter helped advance Adams’ career by offering him a solo show at his gallery, An American Place, in 1936.
As his career progressed, Adams became well known, too, for his work in the darkroom. In a 2014 article in Arizona Highways, Alan Ross, Adams’ assistant and friend, highlighted his artistic vision: “I’m not sure how much I learned that was unique to Ansel, but being in the darkroom and watching him work was amazing. I never saw him make a straight print — just expose the paper to record the negative. The process was always an artistic expression of dodging and burning. He used a metronome to count seconds and didn’t even own a timer. He counted the exposure for everything he did in the darkroom. Seeing how smoothly everything moved was like watching a ballet. Ansel was totally in control of how much light was given to every part of the paper.”
Adams’ work in Arizona Highways was extensive, a product of his long friendship with Carlson. And, as noted elsewhere in this issue (see page 23), he even offered a collection of 150 images to the magazine for $1,500. Today, Adams’ collection is housed at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
— Kelly Vaughn
Arizona Highways inaugural Hall of Fame Inductees