PRIMARY LINK TO ANSEL ADAMS.COM
Our History
SINCE 1902
In the summer of 1901, a landscape painter and political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle by the name of Harry Best took an excursion to Yosemite Valley to camp and paint. Little did he know that this trip would have, indirectly, such an impact on so many, or that we, his descendants, would be telling this story now, nearly a century later.
That summer he met Anne Rippey, a beautiful young woman working as an assistant in one of the photography studios in the Valley. After a whirlwind courtship, the two married on July 28 at the base of Bridal Veil Fall. After the ceremony, they stopped the incoming stagecoach to have everyone celebrate with them. (Rumor has it that several men were courting Ms. Rippey that summer, and Harry' s success lay in his persistence and having sent back to San Francisco for an engagement ring).
That winter, Harry applied to the U.S. Army, Yosemite administrators at the time, for a permit to operate a studio business. The following summer, in 1902, the Bests opened their studio in a tent in Yosemite Valley. Thereafter, Harry and Anne returned to Yosemite each summer, building the original Studio in the Old Yosemite Village in 1904.
Best' s Studio was a family affair from the earliest. Not only was it a husband and wife team producing and selling paintings, painted photographs, and photo finishing, but the Studio also represented Arthur and Alice Best, Harry's brother and sister-in-law. Harry was successful both as a businessman and painter: Best's Studio is the last of several artist's studios that were established around the turn of the century, and paintings of his have hung in the White House and San Francisco' s Bohemian Club for many years. His, and the company's, success is attributed to a deep commitment to Yosemite National Park and the desire to share and create a positive Park experience for the visitors.
Harry and Anne' s daughter Virginia was born in 1904, and grew up spending summers in Yosemite until 1926 when the family took up full time residence in the Valley. In those years, and for a long time thereafter, Best's Studio was the social center of the Valley . It housed the only piano in the Park and the lovely singing voice of Virginia Best.
Ansel Adams first came to Yosemite National Park in 1916 and returned in 1920 as a caretaker for the Sierra Club' s LeConte Lodge, still planning a career as a concert pianist. This goal brought him in close contact with the Bests, and Ansel soon found himself visiting the Studio as much for the company as to practice the piano. On January 2, 1928, Ansel Adams and Virginia Best were married in the newly constructed Best's Studio in the "new village" in Yosemite Valley.
The addition of Ansel Adams to the family had a major impact on the business. At the time of the wedding, Ansel's career as a photographer was just beginning. He had published, with the help of Albert Bender, his first portfolio in 1927, "Parmelian Prints of the High Sierra". The Studio and Ansel had a symbiotic business relationship: Ansel providing high quality photographic material that appealed to visitors, and the Studio providing an outlet for his work and on-going financial support to a struggling artist. In this vein, The Ansel Adams Gallery continues to seek out and represent promising contemporary artists.
Ansel and Virginia had two children, Michael, born in 1933 in Yosemite, and Anne, born in 1935 in San Francisco. The family split its time between San Francisco, where Ansel still maintained the family home, and Yosemite. During the Second World War the family moved to Yosemite year round, and the children grew up in this idyllic spot. Ansel and Virginia published a children' s story book, Michael and Anne in Yosemite , which still occasionally becomes available on the secondary market.
Harry Best passed away in 1936, and Virginia inherited the business that she had been running for some years.
Around this time, Ansel and Virginia conscientiously shifted the focus of the Studio to offer merchandise and services that fit with an ethic to respect the landscape and draw inspiration and creativity from the beauty of the environment. This ethic continues to guide The Ansel Adams Gallery, and, while the standard is high, we think we have been successful in finding and developing artwork and services that fit this ethic. Reading was a life long passion of Virginia's, and her interest embodied itself in a fine selection of books, and the book selection continues to be outstanding and widely complemented. Ansel and Virginia published a number of books, cards, and other photographic related items.
In the early 1950's, Ansel initiated the Yosemite Special Edition Photograph series , a series of Ansel's photographs printed under his supervision and differentiated from his exhibition prints by price and presentation. The Ansel Adams Gallery continues to offer the Yosemite Special Edition, printed by Alan Ross . The Gallery is the exclusive source for these beautiful photographs printed from Ansel Adams' original negatives.
The Photography Workshop program began in 1940, and was one of the first photographic education programs in the country. The original workshops were one week long with several instructors, and groups of 10 to 12 students worked with different instructors in field, classroom, and darkroom sessions. Many participants have told us that the workshop program with Ansel and the other professional photographers was a life shaping experience.
Virginia Best Adams operated the Studio until 1971, when she and Ansel turned the company over to Michael and Jeanne Adams, their son and daughter-in-law.
During this time, the name of the business was changed to The Ansel Adams Gallery to reflect the primary focus of photography, and the powerful legacy that Ansel had in photography and environmental conservation. Photography and conservation are embodied in the person and work of Ansel Adams, and it is the purpose of the Gallery to encourage the values, efforts, and sense of awe that Ansel held and personified.
Ansel Adams
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The Tetons - Snake River (1942) by Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer, best known for his black and white photographs of California's Yosemite Valley.
Adams was also the author of numerous books about photography, including his trilogy of technical instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative and The Print). He co-founded the photographic association Group f/64 along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham.
He and Fred Archer are credited with creating the zone system, a technique which allows photographers to translate the light they see into specific densities on negatives and paper, thus giving them better control over finished photographs. Adams also pioneered the idea of visualization (which he often called 'previsualization', though he later acknowledged that term to be a redundancy) of the finished print based upon the measured light values in the scene being photographed.
Contents
1 Life
2 Works
2.1 Notable photographs
2.2 Photographic books
3 See also
4 External links
Farm workers at Manzanar War Relocation Center with Mt. Williamson in the background.
Adams was born in San Francisco, California in an upper-class family. When he was four, he was tossed face-first into a garden wall in an aftershock from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, breaking his nose. His nose was never repaired and appeared crooked for his entire life.
Adams disliked the uniformity of the education system and left school in 1915, at the age of 12 to educate himself. His original passion was to become a concert pianist, but Adams became interested in photography after seeing Paul Strand's negatives. Adams long alternated between a career as a concert pianist and one as a photographer. He met his future wife, the camera-shy Virginia Best, in Yosemite.
At age seventeen, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources. He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did his wife, Virginia. Adams was an avid mountaineer in his youth and participated in the club's annual "high trips", and was later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada. It was at Half Dome in 1927 that he first found that he could make photographs that were, in his own words, "...an austere and blazing poetry of the real".
Adams became an environmentalist, and his photographs are a record of what many of these national parks were like before human intervention and travel. His work has promoted many of the goals of the Sierra Club and brought environmental issues to light.
Photographs in Adams' limited edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, along with his testimony, are credited with helping secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks in 1940.
During World War Two Adams worked on creating epic photographic murals for the Department of the Interior. Adams was distressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He was given permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo-essay first appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California.
In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture.
In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall accepted a commission from Clark Kerr, then President of the University of California, to produce a series of photographs of the University's campuses to commemorate the centennial celebration of the University. The collection, titled "Fiat Lux" after the University's motto, was published in 1967 and now resides in the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.
Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his career. He was elected in 1966 a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Ansel Adams died on April 22, 1984 from heart failure aggravated by cancer. When he died he left behind his wife, two children (Michael born August 1933, Anne born 1935) and five grandchildren.
Publishing rights for the Adams' photographs are handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.
The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest was renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness in 1984 in his honor. Mount Ansel Adams, an 11,760 ft. peak in the Sierra Nevada, was named for him in 1985.
The full archive of Ansel Adams' work can be found at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Works
Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park (1942) by Ansel Adams
Adams Church, Taos, Pueblo (1942) by Ansel Adams
Notable photographs
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, 1927.
Rose and Driftwood, 1932.
Clearing Winter Storm, 1940.
Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
Ice on Ellery Lake, Sierra Nevada, 1941.
Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox at Canyon de Chelly
Aspens, New Mexico, 1958.
Photographic books
Ansel Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places, 2005. ISBN 1-59764-069-7
America's Wilderness, 1997. ISBN 1-56138-744-4
California, 1997. ISBN 0-8212-2369-0
Yosemite, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2196-5
The National Park Photographs, 1995. ISBN 0-89660-056-4
Photographs of the Southwest, 1994. ISBN 0-8212-0699-0
Ansel Adams: In Color, 1993. ISBN 0-8212-1980-4
Our Current National Parks, 1992.
Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 1986. ISBN 0-8212-1629-5
Polaroid Land Photography, 1978. ISBN 0-8212-0729-6
These We Inherit: The Parklands of America, with Nancy Newhall, 1962.
This is the American Earth, with Nancy Newhall, 1960. ISBN 0-8212-2182-5
Born Free and Equal, 1944. Spotted Dog Press
Technical books
The Camera, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2184-1
The Negative, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2186-8
The Print, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2187-6
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs ISBN 0-8212-1750-X
Charles Hitchcock Adams, Ansel Adams' father, an amateur astronomer
Allied Arts Guild, in Menlo Park, California, where Adams took commercial photographics of artists' work
Zone system, a unique approach to film exposure and development invented by Ansel Adams and Frederick Scott Archer in 1939 or 1940
Nature photography
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Ansel Adams
History of Ansel Adams Ansel Adams (1902–1984)
PBS Documentary: Ansel Adams Transcript of the Ric Burns feature documentary Ansel Adams (2002)
Official Site of Ansel Adams Ansel Adams Gallery
Andrew Smith Gallery Andrew Smith Gallery has original signed Ansel Adams photography
Ansel Adams Memorial Grove A restoration and preservation project of Ansel Adams in San Francisco
American Memory - Ansel Adams "Suffering Under a Great Injustice" Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar From the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress.
Photo of Ansel Adams
Picturing the Century - Ansel Adams Selection of photos at the National Archives
Records of the National Park Service - Ansel Adams Photographs 226 high-resolution photographs from National Archives Still Picture Branch
Persondata
NAME
Adams, Ansel Easton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH
February 20, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH
San Francisco, California
DATE OF DEATH
April 22, 1984
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams"
Categories: 1902 births 1984 deaths American autodidacts American mountain climbers American photographers Deaths from cardiovascular disease Nature photographers People from San Francisco Pioneers of photography Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Sierra Nevada Yosemite
ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS
VINTAGE AND RARE ORIGINALS
YOSEMITE SPECIAL EDITION PHOTOS
MATTED PRINTS
POSTER PRESENTATIONS
AVAILABLE BOOKS AND MULTIMEDIA
ALL OTHER THINGS ANSEL
Black & White Photography
Selected works by well known contemporary landscape fine art photographers.
Jeffrey Conley
Henry Gilpin
Patrick Jablonski
Bob Kolbrener
Kerik Kouklis
Roman Loranc
Tom Mallonee
Alan Ross
John Sexton
Color Photography
Selected works by well known contemporary landscape fine art photographers.
Annette Bottaro-Walklet
Christopher Burkett
Charles Cramer
Michael Frye
Jeff Grandy
Carol Henry
Joseph Holmes
William Neill
Ted Orland
Robert Turner
Keith S. Walklet
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