Ansel Adams or Ansel Easton Adams, an American commercial photographer and an environmentalist, is famous for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite. He was a visionary figure in nature photography and wilderness preservation. He combined his passions for natural landscape and scrupulous artisanship, as a printmaker to his medium. Eventually, Ansel Adams was celebrated as the most exhibited and the successful photographer of his generation.
The existence of an eternal world in Ansel's photograph is the result of his constant selection of transcendent moments. The theme of his photographs complied with his legendary technical brilliance. This rare and unique combination transformed everyday scenes into radiant, priceless moments.
The only child to relatively elderly parents, Ansel was born in San Francisco California, on February 20, 1902, to a rich businessperson, Charles Adams and mom, Olive Bray. Naturally shy and conscious about his crooked nose, which disfigured due to a fall in an earthquake when he was four, he always had problems adjusting into his schools. In addition, his hyperactivity and inattentiveness, eventually forced Charles Adams to withdraw Ansel from school in 1915. At the age of twelve, Ansel self learnt piano and later on substituted his formal schooling with it. He excelled in piano and by 1920; he decided to keep it as his profession. Ultimately, he gave up music for photography, but it was his piano lessons that brought substance, discipline, and structure to his volatile and erratic youth.
If Ansel's love for nature began at Golden Gate, his life was, in his own words, "colored and modulated by the great earth gestures" of Yosemite Sierra. This place transfixed and transformed him to appreciate nature in a different aspect. In 1919, he joined the Sierra Club, where he expanded himself socially and emotionally. Here at Yosemite, Ansel met Virginia Best, whom he married in 1928. The year 1927 was a pivotal year for Adams, as he made his first fully visualized photograph, "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" (1927). Albert. M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and a patron of arts and artists, helped in publishing Adams' first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. After this, he went on to become a successful commercial photographer and the rest is history.
1929-1942 was the phase when Adams created the best of his works. During this period, he also strengthened his friend circle by clicking well with the likes of Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, and Paul Strand. In 1931, he held his much-commended first solo museum exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1953, Ansel Adams collaborated with Dorothea Lange for a lifetime commission, for a photo essay on the Mormons in Utah. In 1962, Adams moved to Carmel, California. Later on, in 1967, he was involved in the foundation of the Friends of Photography. Ansel founded the Group f/64 in association with his friends and fellow photographers, Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. The group led to the opening of the Museum Of Modern Arts' department of photography. He also developed the zone system of photography to calculate the exposure degree of photographs.
Notable photographs clicked by Ansel Adams include but are not limited to "Rose and Driftwood (1932)"; "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941)"; "Winter Morning, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine (1944)." Ansel Adams was recognized with many awards during his lifetime and posthumously. There were also a few accolades named after him such as Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980); Doctor of Arts from Yale University and Harvard University; Mount Ansel Adams (1985), and Ansel Adam Wilderness (1985), to name a few.
His lasting ambition and legacy was to elevate photography to an art form at par with painting and music. Adams also has some books such as "Making a Photograph (1932)," "The Camera," and "The Negative," to his credit. On April 22, 1984, Ansel Adams succumbed to a heart failure.
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