Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer (particularly of the mountainous Far West), who was considered a technical innovator in his field. He was also honored as a conservationist.
Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902, and raised in a house that overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge.
Ansel was just 4 years old when San Francisco was struck by the great earthquake of 1906. During an aftershock, he lost his balance and fell face-first into a garden wall, badly breaking his nose. A doctor recommended resetting the nose in his adolescence, but Adams’ nose remained crooked throughout his life.
He took an early interest in music and taught himself how to play the piano, showing a marked talent.
During a family trip to Yosemite National Park in California, 14-year-old Adams was given a Kodak Brownie camera thus beginning a lifetime passion. From that time on, he returned to Yosemite every year to explore and to photograph.
Adams sold his first photos to landscape painter Harry Best, who kept a studio home in Yosemite and lived there during the summer. Adams grew interested in Best's daughter Virginia and later married her in 1928.
In 1920 he decided to become a professional musician. He gave concerts and piano lessons but Adams’s frequent visits to the Sierra Nevada region had increased his interest in photography.
Adams’ photographs and writings first appeared in public in The Sierra Club’s 1922 Bulletin.
In 1927, Adams began working with Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco arts patron. Bender helped Adams produce his first portfolio in his new style, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome.
After contributing images to the Sierra Club newsletter and opening a one-man exhibition in 1928, Adams decided, in 1930, to make photography his full-time career.
Adams’s early pictures were in the soft-focus tradition popular at the time, in which the image is hazy, or seen through a mist in order to make it look more like a painting. After he met the photographer Paul Strand, whose style was crisp and clear in detail, his ideas about photography were changed.
In 1932 Ansel Adams helped start Group f/64, which rebelled against the soft-focus technique. They espoused "pure or straight photography" over pictorialism (f/64 being the smallest aperture in the camera lens that gives great depth of field).
Adams opened his own art and photography gallery in San Francisco in 1933. He also began to publish essays in photography magazines and wrote his first instructional book, Making a Photograph, in 1935.
On her father Harry Best's death in 1936, Virginia inherited the studio and continued to operate it until 1971. The studio is now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery.
Adams helped change the public’s attitude toward photography by convincing many people that photographs should be considered as art. His wilderness photography, which celebrates an ideal vision of nature and the American West, includes some of the finest photographs in history.
Probably the best-selling photograph of all time, Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, was shot late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of U.S. Route 84-285.
Despite being a famous fine art photographer Ansel Adams also took commercial gigs, snapping shots for everyone from women's colleges to dried fruit companies.
He helped found the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1940.
Adams worked on more than forty books in which he described in accurate detail the techniques he used to achieve his images.
It wasn’t until the 1970s, when an associate advised him to stop selling prints and focus on his book collections, that Adams became financially solvent.
In 1934 Adams became involved with the Sierra Club conservation society and served on its Board of Directors until 1971. He was made honorary vice president in 1978 and held that position until his death.
Adams appeared frequently before Congress, trying to preserve and protect the landscape he photographed, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 for his lifelong contributions.
Adams died from cardiovascular disease on April 22, 1984, in the Intensive-care unit at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at age 82. He was surrounded by his wife, children Michael and Anne, and five grandchildren.
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| Ansel Adams Photo by J. Malcolm Greany, c. 1950 |
Ansel was just 4 years old when San Francisco was struck by the great earthquake of 1906. During an aftershock, he lost his balance and fell face-first into a garden wall, badly breaking his nose. A doctor recommended resetting the nose in his adolescence, but Adams’ nose remained crooked throughout his life.
He took an early interest in music and taught himself how to play the piano, showing a marked talent.
During a family trip to Yosemite National Park in California, 14-year-old Adams was given a Kodak Brownie camera thus beginning a lifetime passion. From that time on, he returned to Yosemite every year to explore and to photograph.
 |
| Kodak No 1 Brownie Model B box camera, the first model Adams owned |
Adams sold his first photos to landscape painter Harry Best, who kept a studio home in Yosemite and lived there during the summer. Adams grew interested in Best's daughter Virginia and later married her in 1928.
In 1920 he decided to become a professional musician. He gave concerts and piano lessons but Adams’s frequent visits to the Sierra Nevada region had increased his interest in photography.
Adams’ photographs and writings first appeared in public in The Sierra Club’s 1922 Bulletin.
In 1927, Adams began working with Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco arts patron. Bender helped Adams produce his first portfolio in his new style, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome.
 |
| Monolith, the Face of Half Dome Wikipedia |
After contributing images to the Sierra Club newsletter and opening a one-man exhibition in 1928, Adams decided, in 1930, to make photography his full-time career.
Adams’s early pictures were in the soft-focus tradition popular at the time, in which the image is hazy, or seen through a mist in order to make it look more like a painting. After he met the photographer Paul Strand, whose style was crisp and clear in detail, his ideas about photography were changed.
In 1932 Ansel Adams helped start Group f/64, which rebelled against the soft-focus technique. They espoused "pure or straight photography" over pictorialism (f/64 being the smallest aperture in the camera lens that gives great depth of field).
Adams opened his own art and photography gallery in San Francisco in 1933. He also began to publish essays in photography magazines and wrote his first instructional book, Making a Photograph, in 1935.
On her father Harry Best's death in 1936, Virginia inherited the studio and continued to operate it until 1971. The studio is now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery.
Adams helped change the public’s attitude toward photography by convincing many people that photographs should be considered as art. His wilderness photography, which celebrates an ideal vision of nature and the American West, includes some of the finest photographs in history.
Probably the best-selling photograph of all time, Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, was shot late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of U.S. Route 84-285.
 |
| Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico Wikipedia Commons |
Despite being a famous fine art photographer Ansel Adams also took commercial gigs, snapping shots for everyone from women's colleges to dried fruit companies.
He helped found the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1940.
Adams worked on more than forty books in which he described in accurate detail the techniques he used to achieve his images.
It wasn’t until the 1970s, when an associate advised him to stop selling prints and focus on his book collections, that Adams became financially solvent.
In 1934 Adams became involved with the Sierra Club conservation society and served on its Board of Directors until 1971. He was made honorary vice president in 1978 and held that position until his death.
Adams appeared frequently before Congress, trying to preserve and protect the landscape he photographed, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980 for his lifelong contributions.
Adams died from cardiovascular disease on April 22, 1984, in the Intensive-care unit at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at age 82. He was surrounded by his wife, children Michael and Anne, and five grandchildren.
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