The photographs of St. Ansel, a different POV

[paulr]

this interview has been linked to before, but i'm posting it again because it echoes a lot of Brian's points (and i think it's just interesting) ...
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa576.htm

[naturephoto1]

I have to agree very much with Brian's comments. Like it or not, Ansel had a tremendous influence on almost all B&W and color Landscape photographers that have followed. That is in either a positive or a negative way. For me, a color Landscape, nature, and wildlife photographer, Ansel has been a strong influence in pointing me to my interests in subject matter. This of course, in my case is also further influenced by my education in Geology and Biology. Without question, for me Ansel is the most influential B&W Landscape photographer. However, my work has additionally been heavily influenced by many of the great color (particularly color transparency) Landscape photographers who must learn to compose and expose at least in part due to the limitations of the transparency material.

Rich

[Merg Ross]

Brian Ellis pretty well summed up my thoughts on Ansel, what I have been saying for the past thirty years; "we don't necessarily realize the debt that we owe him."

You need not like his work to appreciate his immense contribution to photograohy as an art forum. Those who consider their photographic work to be "fine art" should not dismiss Ansel's contribution.

I am not suggesting that I consider my work to be "fine art", for I never really liked the term when applied to photography. Nor, am I a great fan of Ansel's work, although I loved his wit and energy as a person. But, surely, we do owe him the debt of which Brian speaks.

[Kirk Gittings]

Frankly, I don't find it necessary to reject contemporary work in order to like traditional landscape or vice versa. I loved both the Ansel Adams exhibit and the Jeff Wall exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. I discovered some new things in AA prints that I had not seen first hand before and was unexpectedly blown away by some of the Jeff Wall work. Just as I like both Bach and Korn and love both Beethoven and Pearl Jam. I don't follow this staking out of artistic ground to defend like it is the answer for all time.

I hope art evolves, changes and challenges my narrow little definitions and expectations.

[John Kasaian]

FWIW I think Ansel's work was very cutting edge during his time. Look at the landscape photographers working in the US that came before Adams and it is easy to see the difference. While more revered for his technical and teaching skills here, consider the power of his landscapes in his time---nothing less than stunning---and it certainly helped elevate photography to a plain other than George Eastman's "You take the picture--we do the rest" (at least in the US) and probably the reason why B&W landscapes have become a genre unto themselves and have survived though the color film era and still is going strong in the digital age---with LF cameras no less! Whether or not you like photos of the sierras (I do) or whether or not you're a devotee to the zone system (I'm not) I think Ansel Adams is firmly entrenched as an icon, both for his technical and teaching skills as well as his artstic vision and rightly so. To diss Adams' work compared to todays stuff would be like dissing Picasso's work along side the current crop of painters.
More ironic, I see far more Adams calenders for sale than Picasso calenders, so perhaps Adams' work "connects" better the common man.
That ain't a bad thing for any art!
My 2-cents anyway.
~Cheers!

[Struan Gray]

One observation: I think it is interesting that the popular conception of Ansel, and most of his detractors here, concentrate on the grand scenic photographs like - I assume - "Clearing Winter Storm", "Monolith" and "Tetons and the Snake River". With these it is easy to dismiss Adams as just another Sturm and Drang romantic, although even here I see clear differences between Adams' interpretive approach and the more literal photograph-the-most-stunning-scenes efforts of the older survey photographers.

Where I always lose the critics is in looking at Adam's other work, and particularly the more intimate studies of trees and other landscape details. You could accuse him of copying Klimt's woodland paintings, or those wildwood Canadian painters, but in these photos he has moved definitively away from the late romantic landscape tradition. Maybe not as far from Beethoven as Scheonberg or Ellington, but certainly into Debussy or Bartok territory.

Such nature studies have become so ingrained in photography that is is impossible to imagine a world where they were new, but my feeling is that Adams inhabited that world and in any judgement of his status in photography we have to allow him to be a man of his own time. I see no confict betwen my love of more contemporary voices and my respect for Adams, just as I enjoy contemporary music alongside plainchant, or Bacon portraits alongside Monet or Frans Hals. Art can be inclusive, if you let it.

[j.e.simmons]

I still contend his best 'art' was the abstracts like the canyon wall over a frozen lake

I agree. In the other thread, I wrote about seeing a private collection of Adams' vintage prints. One of the prints was from this negative. However, the print I saw was so different from the linked print as to be a completely different photograph. The vintage print was small - not even 8x10. The dramatic contrast of the linked print was not there - it was a subtle jewel that glowed. (And yes, I have seen an actual print of this negative done in Adams' later interpretation.)

I don't think this is an example of Adam's eyesight changing over the years and his beginning to print with more contrast, although we know that did happen. I think that somewhere along the way, in the 40s perhaps, Adams had a change of artistic vision.

I don't believe you can understand Adams without seeing early prints of his negatives. Later prints of early negatives are simply not the same. If you get a chance to see early prints, be sure to take advantage of it.
juan

[Darryl Baird]

I'm sure collectors agree on this early versus later prints from AA. Sotheby's auctioned off three Moonrise Over Hernandez within the same auction. Provenance not considered, one of the prints sold for almost 20 times the other two. (see attached images)

This is a case of market demand, who printed the image, changes in available printing papers, a negative that was intensified, and a change in artistic vision (perhaps). The whole notion of "vintage" trumps the later reproductions with a resounding thump of cash. This does not change, however impressive, the general perception of the popular culture which has seen his work reproduced by ink on paper through posters, calendars, books, etc.

FWIW, I teach a class on photo history and have "outlawed" papers on AA (and Stieglitz) because they never do good research into who he really was... they just review the greatest hits with superlative after superlative, with no depth and it depresses me so much.

[Kirk Gittings]

and a change in artistic vision (perhaps)

I am amused by the idea that Adam's printing changed because of some problem with his eyesight. It really kind of disrespects his vision. In 50 years of following Adams' career (my father was a big fan), I have never heard this theory.

This was a question of Adam's vision changing not his eyesight. I wonder if someone misinterpreted a quote of his along the way? I talked to Adam's about the change in contrast in the summer of 83(?) when I was writing an article on "pallette" in b&w photography for the Journal of American Photography. By 83 this question was old news. For him it was simply a case of being dissatisfied with his early prints and feeling that he could put more emotion in his prints by increasing the contrast in a very controlled way. He was growing as an artist. He would never have risked the safety of the Moonrise negative unless he was determined to realize some new grand interpretation. There is no medical mystery here. And I for one vastly prefer the later prints regardless of the market.

By the way, the earlier version sells for more because it is much rarer too. He printed far more of the later version as demand for his prints was growing later in his life. Or so says a collector friend of mine who has one early and two later prints of Moonrise (nice little nest egg!).

[Darryl Baird]

I have no argument about the eyesight... I thought that a silly concept too. There is a bit more to the story of the "MOH" prints and an alternate story line offers a somewhat different rationale for his negative intensification and the prints that reflect the higher ($600K+) prices -- I'll cut-n-paste from the Sotheby's catalog that I visually cited earlier: (look for bold emphasis)

"CATALOGUE NOTE
The print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico offered here is one of the very few prints Adams made of his most famous image in the 1940s. Made in 1948, the year that Pirkle Jones acquired it from the photographer, this print exhibits the subtlety of tone and high level of detail in the sky that characterizes the handful of prints Adams made of the image before the turn of the decade.

Adams made the 8-by-10-inch negative for Moonrise in the late afternoon of November 1, 1941, while photographing in the Southwest on behalf of the U. S. Department of the Interior and the U. S. Potash Company of New Mexico. Driving back to their motel after an unproductive day of photographing, Adams and his companions – son Michael and fellow photographer Cedric Wright – passed the tiny town of Hernandez. Struck by the quality of light upon the town and its attendant cemetery, Adams immediately pulled the car over to the side of the road and hastily assembled his equipment. Drawing upon his vast reservoir of photographic expertise, Adams made his exposure in the dying light without the benefit of his light meter. Before he had the chance to make a second exposure, the sun sank behind a bank of clouds, and the light changed completely. A full account of the taking of Moonrise, and its subsequent printing history, appears in Mary Street Alinder’s Ansel Adams: A Biography (New York, 1996), to which this catalogue entry is indebted.

The resulting negative, made quickly and under trying conditions, proved difficult to print. In order to make a print from it that met his high standards, Adams had to expend a great deal of time and energy in the darkroom coaxing the image through the printing process. Because of this, Adams made only a few prints of the image in the early 1940s. One was made for his friend Beaumont Newhall, Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art. This print, now in MoMA’s collection, was used by Edward Steichen for reproduction in the 1943 U. S. Camera Annual. Much handled over the years, the print is visibly worn. Adams also made a print of the negative at David McAlpin’s request, and this is now in the collection of Princeton University Art Museum. It is believed that there are two other early prints in private collections.

Although Adams was reluctant to print the troublesome negative, by 1948 he had amassed a number of orders for it (most likely due to its publication in the Camera Annual). Unwilling to toil further with the negative as it was, Adams undertook the harrowing step, in December of 1948, of reprocessing it. After re-fixing and washing the negative, Adams submerged it up to the horizon line in Kodak IN-5 intensifier. This increased the density in the image’s foreground making it comparatively easier to print. That month, using his improved negative, Adams made a small number of prints, including the one offered here, owned by his assistant and friend, the photographer Pirkle Jones.

Other prints made at this time include a print given by Adams to George Waters, inscribed and dated ‘1948’ by Adams on the reverse, now in the collection of the Getty Museum. Another print, inscribed by Adams to Fred Ludekins, was offered in these rooms on 7 April 1998 (Sale 7112, Lot 101). Adams sent a print to Beaumont Newhall and his wife Nancy, and this is now in a private collection. Also in private collection is a print Adams made for a Mrs. Nichols.

The tonal qualities of the few prints Adams made of Moonrise during the 1940s differ from those made later. Early prints show numerous wispy clouds in the sky, in addition to a lustrous band of white above the mountains. Adams printed this image with greater and greater contrast throughout his career, and his last prints show a dark black sky, differing radically from the more open, gray sky in the present print.

Sotheby’s wishes to thank Andrea Gray Stillman for sharing her research on extant early prints of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico."