Ansel Adams: Do you see a worm in this apple?

[Heroique]

Below is a shot by Ansel Adams I recently posted to another thread, but that got me thinking more about how divided I feel about it – so I thought I’d share my thoughts here, in hope of learning more from your reactions.

(Ansel’s title is: “Student Group in Library, University of Rochester.” It appears with a few technical remarks in “The Negative,” chapter 7.)

As I mentioned, I think the photo shows a dazzling mastery of difficult lighting. Few but Ansel could blend natural light from a window – so harmoniously – with the artificial light of lamps. A brilliant performance.

What’s more, I think this lighting just happens to illuminate a composition with a highly complex and supremely enjoyable balance. Indeed, the longer you look, the more balance you discover:
– Social conversation vs. bookish concentration
– Friendly smiles vs. tightened brows
– Luxurious curtains vs. warm wood vs. slick glass
– Indoor décor vs. outdoor architecture
– Piney limbs vs. stony facades, etc.

To be a little more abstract, one might also point-out the symphonic balance of vertical lines (portico columns, book spines, lamp posts), horizontal lines (book shelves & window lattices) and graceful diagonals (tree limbs, hung curtains, furniture backs). Even key bright spots are served by darker backgrounds – and vice versa.

At risk of belaboring the point, I hope you also enjoy all the pleasing triangles – formed, for example, by the portico’s pediment, the sloping curtains, the lamp head + two talking heads. Even the lamp’s illuminated shade shares in the geometry.

The upshot: this photo is a technical and aesthetic masterpiece.

But is there a worm in the apple?

To find out, please allow me to set-aside the photo’s brilliant fireworks, and concentrate on a few of its less-visible traits.

The composition, I think, clearly implies certain assumptions – perhaps without Ansel’s conscious awareness – about the dominant role men, and submissive role of women. If this is true, one is certainly free to link such assumptions with the scene’s era (which I think is the 1950’s – does anyone know the year of the photo?). Others might say that if this assumption is there, it’s unacceptable in any time or place. Still others might argue that no such assumption exists – or even if it did, you wouldn’t be able to prove it.

I think it’s there. Examine the evidence:

This woman is at best a visitor, at worst an invader of this men’s club. (Check out the hunting scene above her head.) If she’s not, where is her book? Why does she seem to interrupt the reader in front of her, and disturb the reader nearest us? Now take a look out the window – at the world for which the students are presumably preparing themselves. With whom is this majestic, Greco-Roman architecture associated? Might you say it’s rooted (I might say floating) above the boys’ heads, like an eternal vision of past, present and future? The girl apparently shares no connection with it. Or if she does, perhaps it’s because she’s the librarian’s daughter, applying some flattery in a matrimonial quest.

Yes, I think Ansel built this masterful composition on such assumptions. And I suspect he did so unconsciously – like so many other consummate artists, necessarily working from the materials and values of their times.

I also think that while it’s important to be aware of such issues, they’re less important than the stunning photographic achievement in front of us. Photography may contain biases in its material or presentation, but in the end, photographic art means itself – and necessarily subordinates the moral lessons or cultural assumptions it may contain, conscious or not. I think this photo will remain a masterpiece – perhaps a neglected one – despite ever-changing times. Do you?

[Richard M. Coda]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I think you have read WAY too much into this photograph. If anything, doesn't it say exactly the opposite by the fact there is a woman in a men's club? That women had broken that barrier... now look, I'm starting to think too much.

Was this a commercial assignment? if so, he photographed what he was told to.

[Deane Johnson]

If your interpretation of the photo is accurate, the photo would only be reflecting the mindset of the era more than 50 years ago. There would be no worm in the apple. Ansel often referred to his photos as the equivalent of his experience. If that were the experience of the day, then his photo would have reflected it. There is no social or political statement here.

[Vaughn]

I believe Ansel's wife owned and operated the Best Studios (the future Ansel Adams Gallery) in Yosemite Valley...not exactly the male-dominated mind-set you are implying here. The f64 group was not a men-only club.

But then I have heard of contempory photo historians claim that two women holding hands in a Victorian-age photograph meant that the two women were probably in a lesbian relationship.

All interesting speculation, but that is all it is, IMO.

Vaughn

[Daniel_Buck]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I think you have read WAY too much into this photograph.

indeed, I think some times people can read way to much out of a photo, that wasn't originally intended. But, if that gives the viewer enjoyment finding what they want to find in the photo, all the better I suppose!

[AFSmithphoto]

I don' think that the interior lamp is the main light source for the interior portion of this photo. It appears to me, that a far more powerful source was positioned behind the woman's chair outside of the left side of the frame.

For one thing the woman's back is FAR brighter than her face, indicating a brighter light behind her than in front of her. You can also see some light spilling on the side of the mens faces which is closer to the lens, indicating that the light hiting them is not directly behind them, but about 30 degrees off of perpendicular to the lens on the camera left side.
Furthermore, examine the upper section of the arms of the womans chair. The one on camera left is in stark shadow, despite being directly in the path of light that the lamp would generate.
Finally, look at the books in the background. The highlights are on the left of their bindings, a tell tale sign of a light being raked across them from their left.

[Merg Ross]

1952. Two lights in cone reflectors, one bounce. This photograph was made while on assignment for the University of Rochester.

[Nathan Potter]

I have often thought that really good photographs tell more about the photographer than the photographic subject; but in this case the critique above may tell more about Heroique than Ansel.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Jim Galli]

You forgot the everlasting struggle of wealth vss need. This pampered female is obviously trolling for a respectable well to do husband. Her filthy rich parents have put her in this situation for exactly this purpose. She'll wind up submissively married to some pompous ass politician that's getting serviced daily by call girls with your tax dollars. It's all George Bush's fault. Hey, is that class of '42 Geo?? Barbara, is that you?????

[Mark Sampson]

It's worth noting that Adams was, indeed, on assignment from the University of Rochester. Everyone tends to forget that he was a working professional photographer until long past what we think of as retirement age. The personal work that his reputation stands on did not pay his bills until he was in his seventies.
And it's foolish to judge a work by the standards of a time different than when it was created, or standards different than those of the entity that commissioned the work. It's likely that Adams' thinking about gender roles would have been typical of someone who came of age in the 1920s, but so what if it was? Certainly the 21st century critic can fill a whole career decoding and criticizing the social attitudes of 1950s academia... but to what point? The UofR still exists, those buildings still stand, the subjects in the photo have reached retirement age, and yes, attitudes, institutional and personal, have shifted from the male-dominated patriarchy of those days. It's worth noting that in the 1950s. women at the UofR had their own (old) campus across town, segregated from the men; so the woman in the picture is indeed a visitor. My aunt and uncle were both students there at around the time of these photographs (c.1953)- perhaps they remember the bearded photographer.