The photographs of St. Ansel, a different POV

[Brian K]

also consider the idea that people like to make everything about themselves. artists make art that's about themselves in one way or another; viewers take what they're looking at to be about themselves in one way or another.

It takes a much greater sense of abstraction to relate to a landscape than it does to relate to a person.

I see this all the time with people who aren't used to looking at landscape. They'll make comments like "I wish there was a person in it!" It's usually too hard to explain that they're missing the point entirely.

A related point is that sophisticated viewers always look at the subject in terms of how the art presents it--they're aware of the relationship between the subject and the object, which is often where all the interest lies in a landscape picture. More casual viewer tend to look right through the picture to the subject--"that's mom," or "that' a hill." unless there's something especially dazzling or familiar about the hill, mom will always be more interesting to this kind of audience.

You're right on target with this post. I think that people require greater sensitivity to appreciate landscape photography than to appreciate photographs of people.

People have been designed to have great empathy for others, and I don't mean empathy in the more altruistic sense, but in the sense of being able to comprehend the situations of others and to be able to determine the emotional state of others just on facial expression. We are very aware of the message that the facial expressions and body language of others communicate. That makes it far easier to understand the intent of the photograph, understand the emotional state or to at least feel a connection when the subject of the photograph, or a main element, is a person. The subject is laughing, it's a funny photo, the subject is smiling it's a happy photo, the subject is crying, it's sad photo, and so on.

Landscape does not have those obvious clues and it is far easier with landscape for the audience to interpret it in a way that relates to them, or to simply not relate to it at all. The audience of a landscape photograph can project themselves more into the photograph and read less of what the photographer might be doing. Also for some people there is little emotional response from landscape photography and even live landscape. Some people seem to only have an emotional response to other people and not to inanimate objects or places.

I think it's far more of a challenge to elicit an emotional reaction to a landscape or still life than it is with a portrait.

[paulr]

something implicit in all of this is that landscape pictures are actually about people; just not in a way that's particularly obvious most of the time.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Thanks everyone for the great thread and posts.

Brian - Your last post reminds me of the teachings of Minor White.

Thanks again everyone.

[Dean Cookson]

And copying is the highest form of flattery.

Not a bad way to learn the craft part either. If you can plop your tripod down in the same holes Adams did and wind up with images that compare favorably to his chances are you've gotten pretty good at the exposure, developing and printing pieces.

[Brian K]

Thanks everyone for the great thread and posts.

Brian - Your last post reminds me of the teachings of Minor White.

Thanks again everyone.

Eric I must be channeling Minor.

Landscape photography is very much about the photographer whereas portrait or people photography is often a collaboration, either intentional or not, between the photographer and subject. So I think that landscape is ultimately a more personal form of expression, however it is not easy to read the photographer's message unless the audience knows something about the photographer, things that might be of a more personal nature and not readily known.

[Doug Herta]

I was reading the collection of Ansel's letters the other day. Near the end of his life, he was appalled by the Reagan Administration's dismantling of environmental regulations and conservation measures. He used his influence to coordinate efforts to stop James Watt and other members of the Reagan administration from what he thought was short-sighted policy in regards to the environment.

He loved what he photographed, and he obviously cared about preserving what he thought was very beautiful. David Vestal spoke of how photographs can have more meaning once one understands the context in which they are made. When I look at AA photos I remember his membership on the board of the Sierra Club, his petitioning to preserve wilderness, his meeting with Ronald Reagan to further his conservation agenda, etc. This (maybe) unfairly influences me to look on his work kindly because he appeared to be a man of great integrity. He didn't just take pretty pictures of natural places: he used his influence to preserve it for the rest of us.

(Sorry to bring up the Gipper. I don't want to start a political discussion. I am only reflecting on what I see in his photos and what I see in his writings, and admire the man.)

[Michael T. Murphy]

While I too find the endless Ansel clones a bit ubiquitous

Are we allowed to *admit* all of this in public? On a LF forum? Feels like confession ...

I saw the Jeff Wall show in Chicago recently. Although I knew his work and all of the images that I saw, I was just blown away by seeing the large scale, back-lit Cibachromes in person. Just before, and then again just after viewing the Jeff Wall pieces, I tried to look at the Ansel Adams works also on display at the Art Institute in Chicago. I grew up on Strand, Steiglitz, Adams, Weston, et. al. I am a bit bored by much of that now, but I expected to learn something and maybe be re-converted by seeing the actual Adams prints.

Instead I found Adams cold, calculating - pretentious, which is exactly what I *expected* to feel about the Jeff Wall work. It seemed to me that the Adams were as carefully contrived and staged as the Wall pieces, but without admitting to being staged. (I don’t want to create too much philosophy out of what I perceived, but looking for a way to explain it. ;>) )

I know Adams did a great job lobbying for wilderness, the national parks, etc., and is greatly respected for the work he did. Perhaps the Jeff Wall pieces will seem as dated in another 25 years. Wall's little technical flamboyances - of shooting near white linoleum in high key across much of the frame, for example, and holding detail to the very edge of what a Cibachrome can reproduce - in some ways shows he learned the technical lessons laid down by Adams.

But Wall's work seemed to go beyond technical brilliance, and beyond mere conceptual irony and angst. Those seemed like requisites to begin the works, but only explain a small part of the work. In my eyes Wall really raised the standard for those who would follow. It seems like that is where Adams stopped.

Maybe it is the fact that Adams wrote about the formal so much that is all I see in his works, while Wall talks only about content. Maybe it is that he made darker prints – printed down – as he got older, and oversimplified? (though I think these were vintage prints.)

They just seemed so vacant, like there was nothing to see there – OK, a tree – I get it, let’s move on. It all just seemed too formulaic and simple, while Wall’s work – which looks simple and seems derivative of so much 19th century painting – seemed complex and vivid.

Best,
Michael

[paulr]

Michael, i think that kind of 180 degree shift in tastes is completely natural. for one thing it reflects how personal your connection to Adams' work was (or is) ... that it can feed your soul at one stage of your life and then seem completely vacant at another. you got what you needed from it, and right now you don't need any more of that! maybe someday you'll see it in a totally different way and rediscover it, and maybe not.

i have two friends in the classical music world ... one getting her phd in piano performance, the other an up-and-coming composer. last time i talked to them, they both HATED classical music. all of it. to a degree that probably wouldn't be possible for you or me to hate it. she just wanted to listen to dance music and he just wanted hard rock. i'm sure neither will feel that way forever, but considering they're both in such intense personal (and professional) relationships with that music, it makes sense that some of the fights and dry spells will be ugly ones.

[Doug Dolde]

You got it wrong...it is St. Jobs NOT St. Ansel.

[Brian Ellis]

was anyone disputing that his pictures are gorgeous? i think the debate is more about how great or how important an artist he was.

unfortunately, people can get pretty polarized over ansel ... a guy who by most accounts you'd have a hard time not liking. i suspect that those who dismiss him outright are reacting mostly against the generations who think ansel invented photography, yosemite, light and shadow, and that he personally hung the moon over hernandez, new mexico.

it probably doesn't help that he lapsed into repetition in his final decades, and that some of this less inspired work became some of his most popular. Or that he's been copied so much that some of us can get sick of looking at anything ansel-esq.

i personally think that he was not, in fact, god, that he was not in the same league of creative genius as some of his contemporaries (weston, strand, stieglitz, walker evans, etc.), but that he made some important contributions that should be recognized.

anyone interested in giving him a second look should take a look at the catalog of the big ansel retrospective that szarkowski curated several years ago. the reproductions are good (and include some lesser-known gems) and the essay is wonderful--the point about joy is not lost on szarkowski.

Those are all good points. The other side of the coin is that it can be difficult to separate his many contributions to photography and his other activities from his work as an artist. He was just such a giant for so many years, he kind of loomed over all things relating to "photography as art" from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s. He was one of the original founders of Aperture magazine, he was one of the motivating forces behind the creation of the department of photography at MOMA, he originated the idea of photography workshops now so common-place today, he of course was a co-creator of the zone system, his instruction books were the most popular of the time, he gave countless lectures all around the country that inspired many great photographers to pursue photography as an art form (Harry Callahan comes immediately to mind but there were many others who cite Adams and his lectures as their original inspiration), he was one of the founders of Group f64 and one of the major forces behind the acceptance of "straight" photography rather than pictorialism as "art," he devoted countless hours and years of effort on behalf of the Sierra Club and environmental causes, he was a tireless lobbyist in Washington for environmental matters and had a huge influence there especially after he became famous. And he managed to do all that while working as a commercial photographer and supporting a family for much of his life.

I think it's also relevant to a lack of appreciation for Adams as an artist that with all of his activities and his eventual popularity and wealth, he doesn't fit our stereotypes of what an "artist" should be. Weston for example comes across much better as the sereotypical recluse who lives only for his art, hence one of the reasons IMHO why some hold him in higher regard than Adams (though if you read Adams' letters you see that they actually were very much a mutual admiration society).

While there were other photographers who may have been more "creative" than Adams (though I don't believe that), there can be no disputing his massive influence that went way way beyond his photographs alone. And it can be difficult to separate him into two parts, the creative artist on the one hand and the technician/inventor/promoter/lobbyist/writer/commercial photographer etc. on the other. I think it's fair to say that for a period of maybe twenty years no other single individual in America had the influence on the development of photography as an art form that Adams had. And of course his influence continues to this day though we take so much of it for granted that we don't necessarily realize the debt that we owe him.