Kim Weston on Edward

[Duane Polcou]

Mary Alinder in her biography of Adams states that his last significant photograph was made in 1951

Michael A. Smith

One of Ansel's best selling images in both fine print and poster form is
"Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1960"

But hey, what do I know.

[Michael A. Smith]

Well, Duane, it seems you know quite a bit. I stand corrected on the date. I am on the road right now (one reason I have time for this), and I do not have Mary Alinder's book at hand so I cannot check what date she wrote, but Moon and Half Dome was the photograph she was referring to.

So, okay, he was 58. And he lived another 24 years--without making another significant photograph. My point still stands. Adams's great period was late 1930s and early 1940s, when he was spending a lot of time with Edward Weston. Adams was in his mature period then, but it simply did not last very long.

Michael A. Smith

[Darin Boville]

>>My point still stands. Adams's great period was late 1930s and early 1940s<<

I think you'll find that he did many of his iconic images up into the *late* 1940's. I'm not simply nitpicking--the "cut off" date is important if we are exploring reasons for the few iconic images after that point.

For example, consider: Yosemite, of course, was Adams' main subject. Consider also that the number of visitors to Yosemite was low during WWII and rose dramatically after--pretty much in step with the "cut off" that we talk about regarding Adams' Yosemite work.

It is easy to imagine--working in the Park with few visitors. Then they swarm in. You tough it out a few more years. And then it gets harder and harder to make photos.

Consider this chart that shows visitors to Yosemite over the last century and image you are Adams', working in the park:



Don't forget that the park was changing, too.

--Darin

[Henry Suryo]

Historical precedents aside, it's a bit of a depressing outlook if you really believed that you only get 10-15 years to produce significant work. Significance is quite a subjective concept in art and the true significance is in the mind of the creator. Critiques and audience notwithstanding, perhaps a more positive approach is to believe that you've yet taken your best photograph and never will have. Wouldn't this be good incentive to keep trying, to keep searching, to keep learning and wanting to improve? Looking at a retrospective, I am usually equally fond of an artist's formative years as well as the later years or vice versa. Perhaps not for the quality from a technical standpoint, but rather for the insight into their life and their experiences at various points in their life. It convinces me that the world is indeed a vast place and the opportunities to photograph it are endless and always refreshing.

[Michael A. Smith]

John Szarkowski wrote: "The genuinely creative period of most photographers has rarely exceeded ten or fifteen years."

He did not say that no significant photographs were made after ten or fifteen years, but that the truly creative days--the days of expanding personal growth--were basically over.

For oneself (and for oneself only) the photographs one makes are a marker of ones personal growth. And really for the maker, that is all that matters--one's personal growth. Artists are not interested in things made, they are interested in making. (No one exemplifies this better than Brett Weston, who cared very little for photographs he had already made, unless they were very recent. Too many times for me to comprehend, he would sell the last print of a photograph. He did not keep one of everything that he finished.)

Others do not care about an artist's personal growth at all. (Unless one is an art historian or critic.) But while the audience for photographs is usually interested in looking at photographs that they like, if we are so inclined we may look to a photographer's body of work to see how they progressed over the course of their careers, and whether the work became essentially repetitive.

Michael a. Smith

[Bill_1856]

I just thought of another -- Avedon's "Natasha Kinski and the Serpent" was taken when he was nearly 60. Over 2 million posters sold, and Gawd knows how much a signed print would cost.
Incidentally, although Ansel Adams is closely associated with Yosemite, most of his best work (Moonrise, Mt. Williamson, Aspens, Lone Pine, etc) was taken elsewhere.

[Ed O'Grady]

From what I have read and studied of Ansel, he became more concerned about making ends meet toward the end of his creative period.
He had many irons in the fire. Sierra Club, Workshops, book publishing, printing, book signings, presidential awards, exhibits & openings, television appearences, radio interviews the list goes on and on.
He just had to much on his plate to continue to produce new meaningful photography.
He must have felt that the other venues would provide a more significant end to his career and legacy. Just my opinion.