Exhibition: Ansel Adams, Photography from the Mountains to the Sea.

[Ed Bray]

On Sunday my Wife and I went up to London to see the Ansel Adams Exhibition from the Mountains to the Sea at the Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Whilst I enjoyed looking at some of the images I was really disappointed with the subdued lighting in the exhibition hall. I realise that there have been other threads similar to this in the past with other exhibitions but to actually experience the poor lighting for myself was a real eyeopener (in more ways than one). It was nice to see though that a lot of the images were contact prints including one from a MF negative.

On a positive side I was not completely overawed by some of the images, some were great and to see them in the flesh was brilliant (Clearing Winter Storm has always been my favourite Ansel Adams image and still is) but there were many that to be frank I have seen the better of by members of local camera clubs (in my judging days) although they probably don't have the output that was acheived by Ansel Adams during his photographic life.

It was also interesting seeing some of his very early work when he was a teenager and it can be seen even at that early age he had an eye for a picture.

[neil poulsen]

Seems to be something new. I attended a similarly lighted event in at the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum. Some really excellent images. While the rooms were fairly dark, the individual prints themselves had adequate lighting.

[Mr Man]

Whilst I enjoyed looking at some of the images I was really disappointed with the subdued lighting in the exhibition hall.

I hope it's not to bad as I'm off to see it on Friday. Curators these days appear to think that if the display lighting is at any level above te brightness of a candle in the room all the works will instantly fade and turn to dust. A couple of years ago I went to a Stanley Spencer exhibition in the brand new multi million pound exhibition space in the dockyard at Chatham where they had obviously been advised by some expert that LED lighting was the only way to go to stop the works being destroyed. The light levels were so low you could hardly make out the paintings from the walls. when I mentioned this on the feedback form i was told that the levels had to be that low to protect the work. Strange how thousands of works of art have managed to survive for hundreds of years hanging in rooms heated by open fires in British country houses and illuminated predominantly by sun light. I wish the archivist and curators would take a chill pill sometimes.