Ansel Adams Portrait Session

[Peter De Smidt]

From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ay1m16dmsc5fbjg/adams.jpg?raw=1

Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!

[Michael R]

Haha. I think there are multiple violations of Drew’s Laws in this picture. :) But he would probably just say many of Adams’s photographs are downright unsharp up close. Fuzzier than an upside down Ibex in a lightning storm with Vaseline on the lens.


From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ay1m16dmsc5fbjg/adams.jpg?raw=1

Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!

[Mark Sampson]

Looks like a Schneider 121/8 Super-Angulon. Kind of a wide lens- I wonder what the final image looked like.
And you might think that he'd have used a longer cable release.
(When I was a studio portraitist I used a long release held behind my back, so the sitter could not see the releases being triggered. Standard practice at that studio)
But a fascinating image nonetheless!

[Mark Sawyer]

I wonder what the final image looked like...

I searched but couldn't find it, though there were a number of images of Adams making the portrait. Just none of the actual portrait.

Perhaps he forgot to pull the dark slide...

[Drew Wiley]

That was a fairly famous commission in its time. A picture book came out, and the project is still fondly remembered in campus history, especially his shot of the clock tower. That structure is once again the center of conversation, because someone recently sent a drone hovering around it, and the resident peregrine falcons attacked it. Drones are illegal on campus, for that very reason among others.

The campus is rather photogenic, especially at night. Classes are fully back in session, with proof of vaccination mandatory for all students and staff; but I don't know if the campus is open to the general public again yet. Shouldn't be too long now, as the rules gradually relax. The light has been marvelous in that neighborhood, but shifting away the past wee due to an unusual record dry heat spell for this time of year. But cool soft light fog is already starting to head back in today.

And nice try, Michael. I actually have admired some of AA's crispness in portraiture, while others have not. I'm not sure who the subject exactly is, but he's obviously not a Nobel Prize winner because he's actually wearing pants and not just boxer shorts, and even remembered to put on shoes too! Plus that semi-bald forehead, about to be made even more billiard-ball looking due to a wide angle lens closeup, with its slicked-back hair, doesn't look a thing like the wild hair of a real genius like Einstein, Minor White, or the Professor in Back to the Future. Apparently some Administration type instead, whom AA was expected to honor. But glad to hear from you anyway. I guess you needed something to do while blockading the Detroit Bridge with your semi truck.

Oh ...a note on technique. AA was obviously using "fill flash", bouncing light off his own bald scalp to create a reflective glare atop the head of his subject. Who else would have thunk of that? He always liked to have something Zone VIII in the scene.

[Mark Sawyer]

I'm not sure who the subject exactly is, but he's obviously not a Nobel Prize winner because he's actually wearing pants and not just boxer shorts, and even remembered to put on shoes too!

Actually, that's Edwin McMillan, who did win the Nobel prize in 1951.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1951/mcmillan/biographical/

[Bernice Loui]

AA's Fiat Lux series, part of the University of California system's history from that era.

https://www.kqed.org/arts/107969/fiat_lux_ansel_adams_and_the_university_of_california

Some of the "stuff" AA did to put food on the table, roof over head before fame and notoriety from his landscape prints.


Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks, Mark. One of the Cyclotron guys. I had a number of friends who worked in that building, now themselves retired. AA took special pride in that project because he was a UCB alumnus. Lots and lots of those around here, including under my own roof - which reminds me, I better get the carpet vacuumed before she gets back. Bye.

[Bernice Loui]

As the folks at UC worked on cyclotron variants, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky at Stanford went for the linear version..

https://sites.slac.stanford.edu/cro/panofsky-fellowship/biography

Lawrence Livermore Labs is a product of this group at UCB.

Often not appreciated is the long term effect the UC system impressed upon all of California back then and to this day. Add to this Stanford, Cal Tech and more.


Bernice



Actually, that's Edwin McMillan, who did win the Nobel prize in 1951.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1951/mcmillan/biographical/

[BrianShaw]

I searched but couldn't find it, though there were a number of images of Adams making the portrait. Just none of the actual portrait.

Perhaps he forgot to pull the dark slide...

That would have been his assistant's fault. He can't reach the dark slide from where he is sitting. He can barely reach the shutter release. ;)

[Drew Wiley]

(Got rug vacuumed)... I was quite involved with the Campus for a long time in terms of being a technical advisor for their architectural restoration projects, as well as working for the primary materials supplier. It was particularly interesting to get a photography commission in one of those very classic redwood buildings and its environs I was so involved with otherwise off an on over the years. In that case, the shoot and big event involved a Nobel Candidate and his family, and I was given total personal artistic liberty : people, architecture, landscaping, printing the shots too. Fun.

But that all came to the head the year I retired. I had gotten the purchase order from the restoration crew responsible for that same classic building, along with a number of others, and had all the special equipment and supplies ready to go. But some new department head decided to go "modern" and save a bunch of money by transferring purchasing tasks over to basically unpaid grad students instead. Well, being computer types, they would literally go to websites to order sacks of cement twenty five cents cheaper than we could supply them, but instead of just driving twelve blocks to pick them up, would pay forty bucks a sack extra shipping from an internet source. Typical lazy computer screen stupidity. But it was major restoration on a tight deadline highly reliant on my personal advice, which was impossible to meet if the geeks went behind their backs kept clumsily delayed everything. So there was a bit of rebellion, with the workman threatening to walk off unless the new regime got replaced with common sense. It happened, some big shot got fired, and life went on. And I retired. Whew!

The technical side was always fun however. The famous architect of those buildings was Juilia Morgan, some of whose structures I not only helped remodel myself in earlier days, but even lived in, in exchange for remodeling services. Amazing craftsmanship by some of the same workmen who built Hearst Castle.

[Michael R]

Hi Drew, I agree with you regarding Adams’s portrait photography. Some people say it’s bad but I think it is quite good. The one people often hate is the infamous Carolyn Anspacher picture but there’s a lot more to Adams’s portrait work than that. I never thought that was a bad portrait anyway.

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, "The Great Stone Face" they laughed at then, and can't begin to afford a signed print of now! I personally think it's a masterpiece, and outright creatively daring too - who would have thought of tempting that kind of detail in a female complexion devoid of caked-on makeup with Karsh-style lighting, and it ending up making her look truly beautiful anyway, in its own non-stereotypical way. I wouldn't dare unless that person had naturally smooth skin to begin with. And having seen some Karsh before vs after retouching work prints, well.... Some of those glamorous gals weren't really quite like their movie stereotypes, that is, without either a lot of makeup for movies, or a lot of retouching of still studio shots.

I have used Karsh-like Arri projector fresnels and very high contrast lenses for my small amount of studio portraiture, but counterbalanced all that with "snatch printing", ending up with something almost looking like Pt/Pd in extremely subtle tonality. But I'm not aware of any current silver papers that do that decently today; they just go blaaah instead. Graded Brilliant Bromide did it wonderfully, especially in glycin developer.

[Mark Sawyer]

That would have been his assistant's fault. He can't reach the dark slide from where he is sitting. He can barely reach the shutter release. ;)

I wish I could afford an assistant to blame things on... :rolleyes:

[neil poulsen]

From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ay1m16dmsc5fbjg/adams.jpg?raw=1

Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!

You mean it even has one? :)

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Other pictures of the same shooting session, dated Nov. 18, 1966, are available here
https://nara.getarchive.net/media/ansel-adams-photographing-director-edwin-mcmillan-taken-november-18-1966-morgue-05ceac (https://nara.getarchive.net/media/ansel-adams-photographing-director-edwin-mcmillan-taken-november-18-1966-morgue-05ceac)

The photographer who photographed the photographer and his model was Dr. Donald Cooksey, a physicist. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Cooksey)

https://nara.getarchive.net/media/id-photo-of-donald-cooksey-taken-may-291964-morgue-1964-29-p-1-photographer-fd4dbf

In the good old days, physicists worked in suit and tie, and took pictures of their colleagues with large format cameras!
It was so much better in the past ;)

[Bernice Loui]

Another AA "portrait pix.
224620


Bernice

[David Lindquist]

A few things:

1. Thank you for posting this Bernice.
2. Thank you Mark for identifying Dr. McMillan. I knew I had a source for that somewhere but you saved me looking.
3. Drew, Ansel is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I was thinking he may have been awarded an honorary degree but can't immediately confirm that. Not sure he even got a high school diploma. I think it's fair to say that the education he got, largely from private tutors, left him more literate and numerate than some of today's college graduates.
4. His assistant there is the late Liliane de Cock.
5. I agree Emmanuel, (some) things were so much better in the past.

Finally I was at the Charter Day ceremonies at the Greek Theater in 1964 and saw Ansel Adams up at the top photographing the event. I have the book Fiat Lux and I [/I]think[I] I can pick myself out of the crowd in the photograph from that day published therein...

David

[Daniel Unkefer]

I like them boots he's a wearin' :)

[Merg Ross]

A few things:

1. Thank you for posting this Bernice.
2. Thank you Mark for identifying Dr. McMillan. I knew I had a source for that somewhere but you saved me looking.
3. Drew, Ansel is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I was thinking he may have been awarded an honorary degree but can't immediately confirm that. Not sure he even got a high school diploma. I think it's fair to say that the education he got, largely from private tutors, left him more literate and numerate than some of today's college graduates.
4. His assistant there is the late Liliane de Cock.
5. I agree Emmanuel, (some) things were so much better in the past.

Finally I was at the Charter Day ceremonies at the Greek Theater in 1964 and saw Ansel Adams up at the top photographing the event. I have the book Fiat Lux and I [/I]think[I] I can pick myself out of the crowd in the photograph from that day published therein...

David

Correct, Ansel Adams is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I photographed him receiving his Honorary Degree at the Charter Day Ceremony in 1961.

[David Lindquist]

Correct, Ansel Adams is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I photographed him receiving his Honorary Degree at the Charter Day Ceremony in 1961.

Thank you Merg for confirming that Ansel Adams did receive an honorary degree.

David

[Drew Wiley]

Interesting. But an honorary degree would still give him the same privileges and crowing rights. Things sure changed on that Campus a few years later! - time for photojournalists and combat photographers instead. I still remember the dents in my car from the rubber shotgun slugs just driving by, and the crop-duster type helicopters spraying tear gas, and worse, much worse. Wasn't it one of AA's former assistants, Pirkle Jones, who did some notable local photography during that turbulent era? I've seen his Black Panthers work.

[David Lindquist]

Interesting. But an honorary degree would still give him the same privileges and crowing rights. Things sure changed on that Campus a few years later! - time for photojournalists and combat photographers instead. I still remember the dents in my car from the rubber shotgun slugs just driving by, and the crop-duster type helicopters spraying tear gas, and worse, much worse. Wasn't it one of AA's former assistants, Pirkle Jones, who did some notable local photography during that turbulent era? I've seen his Black Panthers work.

To be sure. Wouldn't be surprised if the privileges included periodic letters asking for monetary contributions. And an honorary degree would have a certain cachet that my BS, 1966 (bad year to run out your student deferment) and MPH, 1972, don't have. I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend that institution; I had some rich experiences. On the other hand my alma mater hasn't always done things that elicit a warm fuzzy feeling.

I think it's in his autobiography that Adams comments that the University of California could have had first dibs on his archive but showed a lack of interest so they went to the University of Arizona.

David

[Drew Wiley]

I thought I had a secure deferment. But then somebody threw a molotov cocktail into the records room and burned up all the paper files. It took about a year in those punchcard days to get a duplicate printout of my legit status as a student. However, even though nobody had home computers back then, the local draft board accused me of forging my printouts! I won't go into all the further messy details, but eventually I landed on another deferment.

I don't think AA would be too thrilled with the present direction of the UC Arts program. But if you want to see classic old (or even new) real film flicks for twenty bucks a pop, and where they serve wine, instead of the two dollar and fifty cent old storefront venue down the street with sodas and popcorn instead, well, that's the place to go. I think the traditional old venue down the street is now gone, but there's something similar across town. We never went back to that neighborhood after mice went running across the table in the restaurant next door. I'm sure the new UC venue is quite rodent free, but it's rather artistically sterile in my opinion, at least still-photography-wise, in the lobby itself. Academic creativity tends to be very predictable creativity - how to please your degree sponsor.

[Merg Ross]

I think it's in his autobiography that Adams comments that the University of California could have had first dibs on his archive but showed a lack of interest so they went to the University of Arizona.

David

David, it is my understanding that Ansel had a good working relationship with Clark Kerr, president of the university from 1958-1967. Plans were afoot for Ansel's archive to eventually reside at the University of California. However, with the political unrest surrounding the university in the 1960's, Kerr was dismissed by the regents in 1967. With his departure, no further effort was made to obtain Ansel's archive.

[David Lindquist]

David, it is my understanding that Ansel had a good working relationship with Clark Kerr, president of the university from 1958-1967. Plans were afoot for Ansel's archive to eventually reside at the University of California. However, with the political unrest surrounding the university in the 1960's, Kerr was dismissed by the regents in 1967. With his departure, no further effort was made to obtain Ansel's archive.

And of course that relationship led to Ansel's doing the photographic project for the University's centennial. Reagan's election as governor in fall of 1966 (by then I was in basic training at Ft. Polk Louisiana; join the army and see the South: Ft. Polk, Louisiana, Ft. Sam Houston, Texas and by my last year of active duty, Long Binh, South Vietnam) made Clark Kerr's dismissal inevitable. As Dr. Kerr famously said in a memoir, "I left the University the same way I arrived, fired with enthusiasm."

David

[Jim Andrada]

I was surprised at how many portraits AA has done. One of my friends (also a photographer) showed me a portrait of himself that AA had done when my friend was in his early 20's. He told me that his mother had hired Ansel to do portraits of all the children.

[Mark Sawyer]

David, it is my understanding that Ansel had a good working relationship with Clark Kerr, president of the university from 1958-1967. Plans were afoot for Ansel's archive to eventually reside at the University of California. However, with the political unrest surrounding the university in the 1960's, Kerr was dismissed by the regents in 1967. With his departure, no further effort was made to obtain Ansel's archive.

Fascinating history; so that's part of how the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography had a chance to get its foot in Adams' door...

Thanks, Merg!

[Bernice Loui]

AA best know for Yosemite and related landscape B&W images, yet AA's work ranged from commercial to portraits.

Here is another AA work that is often lesser recognized.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/ansel-adams-manzanar/about-this-collection/


Bernice

[jmdavis]

AA best know for Yosemite and related landscape B&W images, yet AA's work ranged from commercial to portraits.

Here is another AA work that is often lesser recognized.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/ansel-adams-manzanar/about-this-collection/


Bernice

I have always been impressed by the Manzanar work of both Adams and Lange. There is so much to unpack in those photos.

[Drew Wiley]

Lange predictably wore out her welcome by being a little too "controversially" photojournalistic, while AA observed the rules. The most interesting photographer of Manzanar was Toyo Miyatake, himself an internee, who used a homemade box camera and smuggled in film. The camp director was sympathetic to him, and routinely turned a blind eye to his activities. When I was young, my mother would drive us downhill to the Central Valley to help a former internee family harvest their new little orchard crops, since they had to begin all over again after the war. That whole internment thing was all basically a scheme to begin with, in my opinion, with a jealous well-connected farm lobby using fear and prejudice as a ruse to seize their flourishing farms and orchards suddenly at dirt cheap liquidation prices.

[MrFujicaman]

I recall reading that Ansel's formal education ended in the 8th grade.

[Jim Andrada]

When I worked in Japan one of my IBM colleagues from San Jose was also on assignment there. He was a Japanese American who's grandfather had moved from Japan to Hawaii. He was born in the Salinas area in the late 1930's and spent a few of his childhood years in an internment camp (don't remember which one.) He said it was much better than being a kid on the farm because he had playmates and no farm chores. His family got their farm back after the war. One funny thing was that whenever we'd go out to a restaurant the staff would speak to him in Japanese (which he didn't speak, but which I did) so they'd talk to him and I'd talk to them. it was kind of a strange situation.

[jnantz]

Looks like a Schneider 121/8 Super-Angulon. Kind of a wide lens- I wonder what the final image looked like.


my poor guess is it looks like an environmental portrait of the back of a head, neck and hand framing a person …. it's probably where that guy who always photographs/ paints his foot in a the frame to anchor the scene… got it from..

[drarmament]

His portrait work is amazing. I was reading one of his books and it showed his portrait work. He can light his subjects well

[Andrew O'Neill]

I have that very same tripod head.... and a newer version of it.

[nitroplait]

Lange predictably wore out her welcome by being a little too "controversially" photojournalistic, while AA observed the rules. The most interesting photographer of Manzanar was Toyo Miyatake, himself an internee...
And Lange probably ended with the stronger work because of that (https://anchoreditions.com/dorothea-lange-prints). I bought one of Anchor Edition's prints a few years ago - and they did a great print job.
I was unaware of Toyo Miyatake and will look him up.

[Bernice Loui]

Ansel Adams gained vast public fame from landscape images. What is often forgotten, AA did LOTs of portraits and commercial Fotos long before gaining vast public fame for landscape images.


Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

Oh, he had recognition quite early for his landscape work. Stieglitz latched onto his early Parmelian Prints of the high country, well before f/64 days. But despite his growing fame for that genre, including many exhibitions, books, and outdoor assignments, it was my understanding that he never made serious money at that until he was almost 80. His bread and butter was commercial photography.

[Drew Wiley]

Niels - Dorothea L. was from this neighborhood. Before my time, but I've been there at the house in the hills when her second husband was still alive (as an architectural consultant), and talked to her nephew several times a week for many years. She had a reputation for being a "stalker". Even family members dreaded her camera. So, no, she wasn't much for rules. Guess that's why I could never do that kind of work - can't take anyone's picture without their permission. Just not me. The local Oakland Museum considers their collection of Lange's prints to be their crown jewels. I concur. She could be obnoxious, no doubt; but for the sheer number of classic timeless shots she produced... wow!