How black and white photographic landscapes brought fame to the artist and provided him with fame outside the Earth: Ansel Adams

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Economic crises, international conflicts, wars and epidemics - what can attract more attention than these unpleasant and extremely important events for humanity? This question did not arise now, and once, in really difficult times, the photographer Ansel Adams found his answer. Whether he is right or not is up to everyone to decide for himself, but this man inscribed his name in history, and also in the hearts of millions of ordinary people, admirers of his talent.

How the hobby of a restless boy turned into a vocation

His works almost always remained in black and white - even in the days when the tradition of coloring printed photographs was widespread, even when color photography was invented. And now, when it comes to the most beloved and respected American photographers, Ansel Adams is one of the first to remember. He was born in 1902 - then photography was not considered an art at all. His paternal grandfather owned a successful timber processing business, and Ansel subsequently condemned the family's activities due to the fact that rare and valuable species of trees were put under the ax.

Ansel spent his childhood in San Francisco, where he received an injury, the consequences of which "adorned" his face all his life - during an earthquake he hit the wall of a fence and broke his nose. When the boy was five, the family moved to a house on the coast - a house with great views. Adams loved nature since childhood. Restless, hyperactive, restless, he caused a lot of trouble for parents and teachers, but found peace during walks, in which the boy was never restricted. Ansel did not communicate with his mother very much, but a common hobby brought them closer to his father: both were interested in astronomy and spent a lot of time at the telescope. The philosophy of the family, to which the boy was taught, prescribed to lead a modest and unpretentious life, not to forget about responsibility to the world and other people.

It was the father who gave Ansel his first camera, he also took his son out of school for home schooling, since the school regime was absolutely not given to Adams Jr. It turned out that in these conditions it is easier for the boy to show himself, he was able to learn languages and became seriously interested in music. By the way, the neighbor who inspired Ansel to take piano lessons was the then sixteen and later famous Henry Cowell. For several years, Adams was torn between two main hobbies - music and photography.

Photographer and founder of a new style in the art of photography

One of the most powerful experiences that Adams got as a child was visiting Yosemite National Park, which is famous for its picturesque landscapes. This coincided in time with the first photo experiments. Adams began to spend a lot of time in the darkroom, studying shooting techniques, reading specialized magazines, and attending meetings in the photo club.

At the age of seventeen, Ansel Adams joined the Sierra Club, which united conservationists. The club also used Adams' photographs as materials. He himself mastered additional useful skills - for example, rock climbing. In general, one of the main features of Ansel Adams was his ability to constantly learn new things, acquire new skills.

The number of works increased, and in 1927, Adams managed to create the first portfolio, which was a success. In the early thirties, Ansel's photographs were exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, and his first solo exhibition was organized. I had to delve into the intricacies of printing - so that the photographer's skill was not dependent on careless printing. In 1933, Adams opened his own gallery in San Francisco.

He was among those who created the famous "Group F / 64" - an association of photographers who sought new opportunities for this form of visual art. The fact is that in those years photography was focused mainly on painting and graphics, diffused light was in fashion, soft focus - everything that brought a photograph closer to an impressionist painting. The F / 64 group approved new principles. The goal of the photographer was to be a clear and truthful picture, “honest” and clean. Hence the name - this was the designation for the most extreme aperture value in those days, providing maximum sharpness.

Ansel Adams - ecologist and conservationist

The main "model" of Adams was still nature - primarily national parks, forests, mountain ranges and valleys, lakes and waterfalls. In some amazing way, this work was combined with the events that took place in the world and in the life of Ansel himself. He photographed for the US Government, created a high-profile photo essay about Japanese loyal to the American regime. After the war, Adams founded the first US department of photographic art in California. He constantly strived to pass on the secrets of his skill and experience gained through years of experimentation to new generations of photographers, wrote and published books, including the famous trilogy "Camera", "Negative" and "Imprint". In fact, it was Adams who made photography a kind of fine art. He is also famous for always using the equipment at his disposal to the maximum, extracting the best from the rather modest - if we judge from the twenty-first century - the possibilities of the photographer of the past decades.

Among the works of Ansel Adams there were many executed in color, but he still considered black and white photographs to be the main method of creative self-expression, believing that colors limit the possibilities of the master. A large number of negatives and printed photographs of Adams have survived to this day, including portraits and industrial landscapes, and images of various objects, but still he is known primarily as a landscape photographer.

Plus, Adams was as much an artist as he was an environmentalist. It was he who was one of the first to draw attention to the wealth of national parks, showed what treasures mankind has, and many of the famous black and white landscapes of this master are still trying to be repeated by tourists and amateur photographers. appreciated, and an atypical object for shooting - landscapes - aroused interest both in the photographs themselves and in natural monuments.

It is therefore no coincidence that one of Adams' works - the photograph "Teton Ridge and the Snake River" - was among the sixteen selected for inclusion on the golden plate of the Voyager spacecraft in order to become part of the message to extraterrestrial civilizations. And Ansel Adams, among other things, also advised the creators of the Polaroid camera - which has become another attractive tool for the artist-photographer.