Ansel Adams Portrait Session

[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. 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!