If Ansel Adams Were Still Alive...

[Frank Bagbey]

Would Ansel Adams use an electronic synthesiser to satisfy his musical desires?

[dan nguyen]

NO...

He would play on his piano in a barn....

[John Kasaian]

OK

This morning in my class I watched as my PBS Ansel Adams tape self destructed in the VCR. At the time, one of the narrators was discoursing on how the demands of a concert musician were considered incompatible with marriage because of constant rehearsals, long hours of practice etc... in order to be a successful classical musician.

(My initial reaction t this calamity was "gee whiz, now I've got to come up with a lecture!")

It struck me odd that the monastic life dedicated to music that is required of a classical concert musician dosen't apply to successful rock stars.

Why? Does it have anything to do with electronic synthesisers?;-)

[Marshall Arbitman]

If Ansel Adams Were Still Alive...

He'd be clawing furiosly at the lid of his coffin, trying to get out.

Now go out and make some photographs. Or stay home and play yer piano!

[Andre Noble]

John, should have gotten the DVD version.

[Kirk Gittings]

It was with early computer unsharp masking that Ansel corrected the out of focus foreground in "Moonrise" in the last poster series that he oversaw. He always used all the tools at his disposal to make his images sing in whatever form of presentation. Ansel embraced new technologies.

I had a few conversations with him in his later years because my masters thesis revolved around his contributions to photography. He continued to be deeply interested in evolving aesthetic and technical developements and spoke of his dismay at not being able to live into the next century to see what advances would be available. He also spoke of being saddened by the efforts of some who spent their lives resurrecting old printing methods. He mentioned daguerotypes and platinum in particular. This is true!

Read his books. This was a man who was always at the leading edge of technology, but a man who was always dedicated to the highest technical and artistic standards. Using some retro-mythological idea of who Ansel was to argue against digital is antithetical to who this man was and distorts his legacy.

[Donald Qualls]

From The Negative, foreword to the 1981 edition:



The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use whatever current equipment and technology furthers his creative objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions.



Adams used equipment that ranged, through a sixty-year career, from glass plates to modern Tri-X, Plus-X, and infrared films, developers ranging from ABC Pyro to HC-110 and pyrocat. He picked up multi-grade printing papers before 1970. The man who invented the Zone System was a firm believer in using what worked, and in spending what was required and available to put forward the goal of making the best images. He never backed down from innovation, even if it wasn't his -- look in The Print for his design of an 8x10 enlarger using an array of common enlarger bulbs that could be turned off in groups to control the light level without changing the color, and see how he progressed from no meter at all, at the beginning of his career, past averaging meters to the final digital spotmeters he used just before his death.



If Adams were working today, he'd probably be using the highest resolution digital available for commercial work (the stuff he used to shoot with his Hasselblad) -- and still shooting 8x10 film for art's sake, because digital still can't get close to film that size.

[Kevin M Bourque]

According to his autobiography, Adams loved his piano. He would no doubt still be playing it.

Taking a slightly larger viewpoint, the answer to the recurring question, “What would Ansel do?” is “It doesn’t matter”. It never did.

He (and many others) were great photographers, mentors and teachers. His pictures still inspire and educate. In the end, though, it’s your pictures, your choices, even if no on else likes them.

[John D Gerndt]

I too am sure he would be doing whatever it took to make great images. I don't think he cared too much for doing the same thing over and over. You can see the deliterious effect of selling the same print over and over, the first ones were better than the later ones. This seems natural. Who wnats to be an assembly line worker of his/her own art? Who wants to be tied to anything?

I do not think AA was the greatest or even the most influential photographer that ever lived. He may have been the best promoted but that was late in his career. I admire him for doing what he thought was best. I will try to do the same with my own ideas. My own ideas have to do with film and chemistry.

Cheers,

[Gem Singer]

If Jesus Christ were still alive---, what type of vehicle would he drive?