Ansel Adams is one of the giants of 20th Century photography, esteemed for his lush gelatine silver photographs of the national parks that have become icons of the US wilderness. A passionate champion of photography as a legitimate form of fine art, he referred to his most stunning images as his “Mona Lisas”. But Adams was also a tireless conservationist and wilderness preservationist who understood the power of a strong image to sway public and political opinion.
His stirring images of US national parks have no doubt always inspired a desire to protect the natural world. But his lesser-known images of oil derricks and the decimated landscapes in California’s Owens Valley have also taken on a renewed relevance in today’s era of climate change.
Ansel Adams in Our Times at the de Young Museum, San Francisco showcases some of his most celebrated works, as well as those that are less familiar, revealing the ways in which his powerful imagery continues to advocate for the protection of the environment.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
1. The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, 1932
San Francisco, the city of Adams’ birth, is where he first took up the large-format camera. “With images like this, one can sense his excitement with this new tool,” the exhibition’s curator, Karen Haas, tells BBC Culture.
“This is the strait that lies between San Francisco and the Marin headlands, a view that had been visible from his childhood home. The beach below is one that he regularly combed as a somewhat lonely and awkward only child, reinforcing his connection with nature even while living in the city and not in Yosemite,” says Haas.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
2. Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, c 1937
When Adams was invited by US President Gerald Ford to visit the White House in 1975, he took with him a copy of Clearing Winter Storm, one of his most celebrated images. At the time Adams was frustrated with the commercial exploitation and poor management of the country’s parks, and as he presented the print he said “Now, Mr President every time you look at this picture I want you to remember your obligation to the national parks.”
“It really speaks to the impact of the image. For Adams it was so much about showing the beauty, and through the beauty advocating for, and bringing concern for, the preservation of that beauty,” assistant curator Sarah Mackay tells BBC Culture.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
3. Rain, Yosemite Valley, California, c 1940
Yosemite was key to Adams’ development as a photographer and a place for which he felt a great affinity. “It’s where he first took up the camera in 1916. He had been given a Brownie [camera] for a vacation trip when he was just a teenager. He’s one of those young people who really found himself through photography,” says Haas.
The valley was a place he photographed many times and although this particular image may not be as famous as Clearing Winter Storm, it actually takes in the same view, only with the magnificent mountains obscured by mist, revealing Adams’ appreciation of the natural world in all its infinite varieties.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
4. The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942
“This is one of his most critically acclaimed works, exemplifying Adams’ ability to capture the rich nuance of the environment around him,” Mackay says.
The photo was taken as part of the national parks project, instigated by the Department of the Interior. The department was forced to withdraw funding when the US entered World War Two, but Adams, inspired both by the beauty of the parks and a desire to spread awareness of the need to protect them, successfully applied for two Guggenheim Foundation grants in 1946 and 1948, which enabled him to continue photographing the national parks across the country.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
5. Denali and Wonder Lake, Denali National Park and Preserve, 1948
Thanks to one of the Guggenheim grants Adams was able to spend a week in Alaska in July 1948. However, the conditions were challenging to say the least. There were only two days without rain and his camera was constantly filled with mosquitos.
He managed to capture the one, truly striking image of that trip at around 1.30am when the Sun, which had only set two hours earlier, was already starting to rise. “Nothing comes above the mountain because it’s the highest peak in the US,” explains Haas. The snowy expanse of the mountain is lit while everything else remains in shadow. “This is one of his Mona Lisas for certain,” she says.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
6. Burned Trees, Owens Valley, California, c 1936
“The national parks are the pictures that everyone wants to see, but I actually think the most compelling environmental messaging can be found in the images around places like Owens Valley,” says Haas.
While the parks were, and are, protected spaces, Owens Valley had been stripped of much of its natural resources. It had been a centre for silver, lead and zinc mining and the water had been sucked away to serve urban spaces.
“It’s a devastated landscape but he’s finding the beauty in it. He’s very much wanting to call attention to this space,” says Haas.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
7. Grass and Burned Stump, Sierra Nevada, California, 1935
Grass and Burned Stump is an image that has taken on a meaning that Adams, who would have been used to controlled burns, probably didn’t have in mind at the time. “Today when we look at that picture it has an environmentalist bent, but I think when Adams took that picture what he was compelled by was the aesthetic and physical qualities of the tree trump itself,” says Mackay.
(Credit: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
8. Cemetery Statue and Oil Derricks, Long Beach, California, 1939
Twenty-first Century viewers looking at Adams’ striking photograph of a cemetery figure in a mourning pose in front of a sea of oil derricks are undoubtedly going to view it as a comment on the negative impact of oil drilling. Again that may not have been Adams’ original intention, but that certainly does not diminish the contemporary power of the image.
“What I love about that photo is the way that images are reborn or reinterpreted over time and I think that’s a really important element of Ansel Adams’ photographs when we look at them today,” says Mackay.