Most of us are well-aware of Ansel Adams’ enthusiasm about the newer “electronic” processes emerging in his later years:
"I eagerly await new concepts and processes,” he says. “I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." (From his 1981 book, “The Negative”)
Had he lived longer, few of us doubt whether he would have explored his vision by digital means – and clearly not at the exclusion of film.
But this leaves me curious.
How might he have applied these “new concepts and processes” to his older work – not the potential work before him, but the “finished” work behind him. And not just through digital means, but also through newer traditional means that may also have begun appearing late in his career – modernized enlarging lenses, updated film & paper emulsions, new chemistry, etc.
Did Adams ever indicate – directly or indirectly – how he may have manipulated “old” negatives or re-done “finished” prints this way, in an effort to better achieve original aims, technical or artistic? Perhaps quoted evidence to make inferences?
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