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 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, Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans (New York, 1944), pp. 18-19

Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, The Pageant of History in Northern California (San Francisco, 1954), pl. 2

Liliane de Cock, ed., Ansel Adams (Hastings-on-Hudson, 1972), pl. 80

Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston, 1979), pl. 46

Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston, 1983), p. 66

James Alinder, Ansel Adams 1902-1984 (Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984), p. 16

James Alinder and John Szarkowski, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston, 1985), pl. 40

Andrea Gray Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: The American Wilderness (Boston, 1990), pl. 28

Michael Read, ed., Ansel Adams, New Light: Essays on His Legacy and Legend (San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993), p. 20

Andrea Gray Stillman, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs (Boston, 2007), p. 261

Andrea Gray Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams (Boston, 2012), p. 158

Rebecca Senf, Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (New Haven, 2020), fig. 6.3

Ansel Adams was deeply affected by his experience as a civilian photographer at Manzanar War Relocation camp north of Lone Pine in the Owens Valley.  In September 1942, more than 10,000 Americans of Japanese descent were moved to the camp following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  While the primary focus of Adams’ time at the camp was to report on the day-to-day life of the detainees, he found that he could not ignore the imposing Sierra Nevada mountains just to the west of the camp, as well as a massive field of boulders extending several miles to the base of the mountains.  This image, taken from his car’s rooftop platform, is a clever composition that toys with perspective and relative size within a two-dimensional space.