You have to remember that Adams developed both as a photographer and
as a printer, separately. His pushing of printing led to his
development of the zone system and of course that changed his
approach to photography not only in his exposure, but, I think, his
increasing abstraction of nature. His early stuff as he was learning
his craft was indistinguishable from the other "Pictorialists" from
that era although occasionally he reprinted some of his early
negatives and utterly transformed them.
He also came to photography late because he intended a career as a
concert pianist and that did not work out. So a lot of his stuff that
is preserved in museum exhibits are his baby steps as he learned the
craft, but not yet pushed it forward. There is a tendency, I think,
to hang anything by a famous person. I can think of a few paintings
in a Van Gogh exhibit I saw a few years ago that I think he would
have been embarrassed by in that setting, little more than exercises
exploring an idea.
Winsor
Long Beach, California, USA
On Dec 17, 2005, at 11:06 PM, Brian Swale wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I finally made it to the Ansel Adams exhibition of ?75 images.
>
> Turns out this set is owned by a daughter of Ansel's. Every print
> was signed
> in copperplate script by Ansel on the lower right with a very sharp
> lead pencil.
>
> Most of them are amazingly sharp with a wealth of detail close up,
> but I
> thought the one with the central 3 - 5 aspens in the morning light
> with a dark
> grove behind was blunt. The printed version is better in my opinion.
> "Moonrise over Hernandez" is amazing. That is a huge landscape, and
> this
> fact is illustrated by the top of what seems to be a substantial
> house peeping
> over the trees quite some way behind the graves.
>
> The prints are black and white, black, grey and white, or black and
> grey !!.
>
> No colour. I think they are all silver gelatin(e) prints.
>
> OK, he was using the Zone System, but it seemed to me that he used
> it too
> much to make a point and sometimes the overall impact of the image
> suffered in consequence. For example, the shot of Mt McKinley with
> a lake
> in the foreground and a huge slice of black forest right across the
> middle,
> would be much better if the black of the forest were not so black.
> And there
> are others. One of my top favourites from the books, the deposit of
> ice at the
> foot of a cliff beside a lake, disappointed me; the ice seemed
> muddy and
> lacked luminosity. Maybe that is how it was. The print of the
> church at Taos
> was good to see in the flesh. What amazing architecture !!
>
> Overall, I was very glad I went. I might even go back again for
> $8.50. I beat
> the Sunday rush; when I arrived the place was nearly deserted; by
> the time I
> came to go out there I was surprised to see a very large procession
> of people
> following me. Must have been the smell or something.
>
> The prints can be seen in the book "Classic images" of which there
> is an
> abundant supply second-hand. Soon to be one less. There are two
> flavours;
> one containing the images of the exhibitions, and one slightly
> different,
> apparently.
>
> Brian
>
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