Ansel Adams

The Estate of the photographer to The Friends of Photography, Carmel, 1984

Acquired from the above, 2002

Shanghai, Shanghai Gallery, People’s Exhibition Hall, Ansel Adams: Photographer, February 1983, and traveling thereafter to: Beijing, National Museum of Art, March 1983; Tokyo, Odakyu Store Art Gallery, June 1983; Hong Kong Arts Centre, July – August 1983; San Diego, Museum of Photographic Arts, June – August 1984; Haifa, Museum of Modern Art, May – August 1987

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center, Ansel Adams and the National Parks, June – September 1992

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center, This Is the American Earth, September – November 1992; and traveling thereafter to: Washington, D. C., American Museum of Natural History, December 1992 – January 1993; Tokyo, Japan, Laforet Museum Espace, February 1993; Nagoya, Japan, Parco Co., Ltd, March 1993; Hiroshima, Japan, Izumi Wizwonderland, March – April 1993; Osaka, Japan, Nankai Electric Railway Co., Ltd., April – May 1993; Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Museum, May – September 1993

San Francisco, Ansel Adams Center, Ansel Adams, a Legacy: Masterworks from the Friends of Photography Collection, March – June, 1997, and traveling thereafter to: Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hunter Museum of Art, July – September 1997; Louisville, Kentucky, J. B. Speed Museum, September – November 1998; Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, December 1998 – February 1999; Japan, Nihombashi, Mitsukoshi Department Store Gallery, March, 1999; Japan, Ehime Prefecture Museum, June – July 1999; Japan, Toyama Prefecture, Tonami City Museum, July – August 1999; Japan, Hokkaido, Kushiro Art Museum, September – October 1999; Japan, Kawasaki City Museum, October – December 1999; Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, May – August 2000

Billings, Montana, Yellowstone Art Museum, Ansel Adams: a Legacy, October 2002 – January 2003 and traveling thereafter to: University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center, Ansel Adams: a Legacy, August 2005 – January 2006; Loretta and Ligonier, Pennsylvania, The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, March – November 2006; Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Institute of Art, May – August 2007; Tucson Museum of Art, October 2009 – February 2010; Cartersville, Georgia, Booth Western Art Museum, September 2010 – March 2011; Missoula, Montana, Missoula Art Museum, October 2011 – April 2012; Helena, Montana, The Holter Museum of Art, January – April 2013; Charlottesville, Virginia, University of Virginia, The Fralin Museum of Art, June – October 2013

Ansel Adams, Making a Photograph (London, 1948), pl. 13

Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This Is the American Earth (San Francisco, 1960), p. 78

Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light (San Francisco: The Sierra Club, 1963), pp. 168-69

Liliane de Cock, ed., Ansel Adams (Hastings-on-Hudson, 1972), pl. 66

Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), pl. 27

Ansel Adams and Robert Turnage, Celebrating the American Earth: A Portfolio by Ansel Adams (Washington, D. C.: The Wilderness Society, 1980), unpaginated

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1983), p. 10

James Alinder, Ansel Adams 1902-1984 (Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984), p. 12

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 9

Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916-1984 (Boston, 1988), p. 289

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: The American Wilderness (Boston, 1990), pl. 40

John P. Schaefer, The Ansel Adams Guide Book 1: Basic Techniques of Photography (Boston, 1992), p. 141

Andrea Gray Stillman. and William A. Turnage, eds., Ansel Adams: Our National Parks (Boston, 1992), p. 70

Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: A Biography (New York, 1996), unpaginated

John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams at 100 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001), pl. 32

Karen Haas and Rebecca Senf, Ansel Adams in the Lane Collection (Boston, 2005), pl. 87

Ansel Adams, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (New York, 2006), pl. 49

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), cover and p. 93

Barbara Buhler Lynes, Sandra S. Phillips, and Richard B. Woodward, Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities (Boston, 2008), p. 91

Andrea Gray Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams (Boston, 2012), pp. 70-79

Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64 (New York, 2014), unpaginated

In 1932, a group of photographers gathered together at the home of Willard Van Dyke, drawn together by a common aesthetic and direction in photography.  Eschewing Pictorialism, Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Henry Swift, Sonya Nokowiak, John Paul Edwards, and Ansel Adams formed Group f/64.  The name of this group would become synonymous with straight photography.  All seven originating members of the group exhibited their work in 1932 at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. 10 prints by Adams were hung in the exhibition, including a print of Frozen Lake and Cliffs.

Ansel Adams made this photograph in the Kaweah and Kern River watersheds while on the annual Sierra Club outing.  Of it he wrote, many speak of this image as abstract, but I was not conscious of any such definition at the time… For photographic compositions I think in terms of creating configuration out of chaos, rather than following any conventional rules of composition. Edward Weston said simply that ‘composition is the strongest way of seeing.’ 

Quoted in Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 417