Ansel Adams
Page 30
With the Arizona Highways project, Ansel and Nancy discovered how easily they worked together. Each was a dynamo, and together they were more than the simple sum of two. In 1952, Nancy wrote to Ansel,
I am sure you didn’t know when you were kind and hospitable to a guy from the MoMA and his wife, back in 1940, that somehow you gave me a faith and a hope that I needn’t die with everything undone and unsaid because there was no connection between me and the world and no one who believed in me. I had already decided that somehow, for all my early promise, I could never speak for myself; therefore, whatever I had I would give to others to help them speak . . . But you let in a crack of living sun and air. I could see there were still horizons. Since then, there have been twelve long years. The door is open, now. I do not think anything but an act of God can close it.
And that, my dear, is only a little of what you have given me.14
As much as Ansel adored Nancy, many of his longtime comrades regarded her with irritation, claiming she acted stuck-up. They also assumed the two were having an affair. At Ansel’s fiftieth-birthday bash, wall-to-wall with friends awash in booze and devouring a sumptuous buffet prepared by Harry Oye, Nancy drifted about the house ignored by the Sierra Club majority, who protectively surrounded their own Virginia. Oblivious, Ansel held forth at the piano, rolling oranges strategically across the keys while Cedric lay beneath his feet, pumping away with his hands on the foot pedals.15
Ansel and Nancy were in each other’s pockets, creatively speaking, for many intensive years. The American Trust Company hired Ansel and Nancy to author a book in 1954 to commemorate its one hundred years in banking.16 In 1956, Ansel and Nancy curated the landmark exhibition This Is the American Earth for the Sierra Club, and followed it up with a bestselling book of the same name in 1960. The first film about Ansel, Ansel Adams, Photographer, with script by Nancy and narration by Beaumont, was released in 1957.17 Nancy and Ansel also produced the books Yosemite Valley (1959), A More Beautiful America (1965), Fiat Lux: The University of California (1967), and The Tetons and the Yellowstone (1970).18
In October 1951, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies hosted the Conference on Photography. The faculty was an assemblage of the best and brightest in the field. Ansel, Beaumont, Nancy, Minor, and Dorothea joined such compatriots as Berenice Abbott, Herbert Bayer, and Frederick Sommer before an audience of only about sixty participants.19 The small numbers, though a financial disappointment, allowed for intense discussions accommodating all present. Abbott, a gifted photographer of the architecture of New York City as well as the discoverer, preserver, and printer of the photographs of Atget, presented a paper bemoaning the dearth of profound photographic publishing.20 A consensus was reached that creative photography needed the forum of a serious journal.
America was awash in magazines in which photography played a central role. The mother of all was Life, whose first issue appeared on November 23, 1936, during Ansel’s exhibition at An American Place. A huge hit with the American public, its initial press run of 466,000 copies sold out almost instantly.21 The magazine’s glossy paper had been chosen to better serve pictures, not words, and photographers were given bylines, while few writers gained equal recognition in Life’s hallowed pages. Ansel himself was not immune to Life’s siren song. Whenever a possibility of a story for the magazine arose, his letters would bristle with excitement about the project, although few of these came to fruition.
Whereas in the early part of the century having one’s photographs chosen for Camera Work had been the ultimate accolade (it stopped publishing in 1942), from 1936 through much of the 1960s, Life inherited the mantle of prestige. There were almost no similarities between the two publications except that each, in its own individual way, was devoted to photography. Camera Work presented art photography, while Life published photography as reportage, which in some cases attained the level of art. In 1949, an average issue of Life was seen by a staggering fifty-five million people;22 at its demise, in 1917, Camera Work could claim only thirty-seven subscribers.23
In addition to Life and its rival Look, there was a panoply of magazines aimed at the amateur photographer, including U.S. Camera, Camera Craft, Minicam, Modern Photography, and the most successful of the group, Popular Photography, with a readership of four hundred thousand—a far cry from Life’s base, but a significant number nonetheless.24 For Ansel, Beaumont, and Nancy, however, the popular press reflected few of their photographic concerns. In 1945 they had begun talking of starting a journal in the spirit of Camera Work, soon including Minor in their plans.25 At the conclusion of the Aspen conference, a small core group composed of Ansel, Nancy, Beaumont, Minor, and Dorothea determined to get the magazine of their dreams published. Their ranks soon swelled with a handful of others, among them Barbara Morgan and Dody Warren, an assistant at various times to both Edward and Ansel.26
After playing with possible titles such as Photo-Briefs, Photography Monographs, Photo-Digest, and Photographer, Ansel suggested Aperture, perhaps an unconscious reference to Group f.64, itself named for a lens aperture thirty years earlier.27 Nancy was not enamored of Ansel’s choice, writing Minor, “[The] new title . . . gives rise to ribald thoughts!”28
Minor’s students at CSFA, meanwhile, had been pleading with him to publish his lectures. Recognizing that Aperture could serve that purpose, he volunteered to act as editor, an action heartily supported by all the other founders, each of whom was unwilling to consider undertaking an unpaid post.
Aperture was announced at a party at Ansel’s house on February 27, 1952, attended by forty potential supporters, many of them students at CSFA.29 Subscriptions to Aperture were offered at $4.95 for four issues; those who contributed twenty-five dollars would in addition receive an original, signed Adams print of Door, Chinese Camp, Ansel’s generous idea and donation.30 By March, twenty-five people had joined at the sustaining level, including Life founder Henry Luce.31
The first issue appeared in April and opened with a quote from Ansel (by way of Marx), “We have nothing to lose but our photography.”32 A Dorothea Lange photograph that had been made in Aspen during the conference appeared on the cover. Inside, along with a scant seven photographs, could be found two articles, Minor’s “The Exploratory Camera,” about the use of the 35mm camera for creative purposes, and Nancy’s “The Caption: The Mutual Relation of Words/Photographs,” a remarkable essay on the interplay between words and pictures.
First and foremost, the founders intended to develop a new language to define photography, rather than rely on the traditional art-historical terms constructed for other media. A secondary goal was to show the work of photographers who had not been able to break into the pages of Life or Popular Photography. Often this meant unknown artists, but not always: Aperture’s fourth issue ran a portfolio of Edward Weston’s last photographs, made in 1948. Reflecting the artist’s mood, they were difficult images of death—leafless trees, a decaying pelican—and not his easier-to-look-at nudes, vegetables, or shells.33
Like Group f.64, Aperture declared itself with a manifesto, signed by its founders but most likely authored primarily by Minor White,
Aperture is intended to be a mature journal in which photographers can talk straight to each other, discuss the problems that face photography as profession and art, share their experiences, comment on what goes on, decry the new potentials. We, who have founded this journal, invite others to use Aperture as a common ground for the advancement of photography.34
At Ansel’s behest, for many years and many issues the Polaroid Corporation provided important financial support by purchasing Aperture’s back cover, often using the space to showcase a recent Polaroid photograph by Ansel himself. One night, after a dinner of Chinese beef and mushrooms that he had proudly cooked in his new wok, Beaumont sat down with a Scotch to read the latest issue. The back cover, Ansel’s very quiet photograph of a dead tree, stopped him cold. Beaumont looked at Nancy and said, “Ansel is the greatest photographer that there ha
s ever been.”35
Although the original founders were at first pleased with Aperture, each soon grew disillusioned. Minor used the journal to promote his personal theories, allowing no room for the far-ranging discussions the others had envisioned. With the appearance of only its second issue, the others saw the journal becoming more precious and less committed to the broader view of creative photography that they shared.36 When Minor continued to completely disregard their criticisms, they gave up, withdrawing from active participation, though Ansel and the Newhalls continued to contribute financial support.
Despite these defections, Minor persevered, and Aperture survived. A financial angel, Shirley Burden, underwrote Aperture for many years, and Minor stayed on as editor, with total control of all aspects of each issue, until 1971, when the reins were placed in the hands of Michael Hoffman. Since then, the once-tiny periodical has branched out to become one of the largest nonprofit photographic organizations. They publish photographic books and have an important New York City gallery and bookstore, both promoting documentary photography. The journal itself, now a substantial, finely reproduced quarterly publication, continues to be deeply valued by those who are serious about photography. Their current mission statement reads, “Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online.”37
Ansel, Nancy, and Beaumont had not lost their itch to establish an independent photographic center. It was a given, between the three of them, that their center would be headquartered in the West, where there was still too little to be found in support of creative photography: Aperture, GEH, and MoMA all claimed Eastern residences.
The Newhalls spent New Year’s 1967 with Ansel and Virginia. At their annual New Year’s Day party, the crowd of friends included both Brett Weston and his youngest brother Cole, then the manager of Carmel, California’s Sunset Cultural Center. Listening to the Newhalls and Ansel talk about finding a place for photography, Cole offered space in his complex. With that stimulus, they quickly went to work. By the end of the month, a name had been chosen (Friends of Photography), officers elected (Ansel president and Brett vice president), and nonprofit status applied for.38
Gun-shy about publishing after their Aperture experience, and in any case not wanting to be in direct competition with their former journal, they established exhibitions and workshops as their first priorities. The founding trustees fought against the parochialism of West Coast photographic vision by showing the work of photographers from around the world. During the first year alone, the Friends mounted exhibitions by Paul Strand, W. Eugene Smith, Bruce Davidson, Eugène Atget, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, Minor White, and Ansel Adams. Ansel soon discovered that the audience in Carmel, although relatively small, was enthusiastic. Workshops and publishing enabled the Friends to reach out to a wider geographical base.
It was a struggle. During the first ten years, the Friends survived only through the determination of Ansel, who gave not only of his time, work, and prestige but just as importantly, of his cash. My husband, Jim Alinder, was brought in as director in 1977 and charged with moving the Friends into a healthy financial position so that it would not have to depend on Ansel for its very existence. Working side by side over the next seven years, Ansel, Jim, and an effective board of trustees built the Friends into the largest nonprofit photographic organization in the world, with fifteen thousand members and active exhibition, workshop, and awards programs. It became a major publisher of photographic books, with press runs of ten to twenty thousand copies four times each year. Ansel, Nancy, and Beaumont all continued as trustees until the ends of their lives.39
In 1971, Beaumont retired as director of George Eastman House, having built it into an institution of international renown with a suitable new name, the International Museum of Photography. He and Nancy moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he joined the highly regarded University of New Mexico Department of Art to teach the history of photography.
The steady friendship between Ansel and Beaumont and Nancy finally faltered. As Ansel aged and became more determined to live as long as he could, he drank less and gave up smoking completely. Beaumont and Nancy, meanwhile, continued to puff up a storm and drink with abandon. No one is more righteous than a reformed whomever: suddenly, cigarette smoke bothered Ansel a great deal. He believed that he had developed an allergy to it and felt it was an extreme hazard to his health.40 When the Newhalls were houseguests—which was now more infrequent—Ansel would beg them to smoke outside, but after they left, their bedroom always stank of cigarettes. Even after days of airing, Ansel would swear he could smell it still.
Whether due to some genetic flaw, because of the incurable sadness she felt at the death of their baby and their inability to have another, or her years of what she felt was banishment in icy Rochester, Nancy found her greatest comfort in liquor. Her descent into alcoholism was infinitely sad to witness for all who loved her. When she stayed with Ansel and Virginia in 1969 during the completion of the Tetons book, she would climb the stairs each morning at eleven to begin work with a drink already in her hand.41 She regularly suffered falls, bumps, and sprains. Ansel tried counseling her on many occasions, in person and by letter, but she took no heed.42 Although they spent less and less time together, in an interview on July 1, 1972, Ansel would still proclaim of the Newhalls, “They’re my closest friends.”43
To celebrate their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary in 1974, Nancy arranged a vacation in the Tetons. A priority for any trip to that territory is rafting down the Snake River, secure in the hands of veteran guides, in what is normally a gentle experience. On this occasion, however, heavy rains had fallen, and the river was swollen so high that it eroded the roots of a huge spruce tree that smashed down on the Newhalls’ raft.44 All the passengers were thrown into the river without benefit of life jackets, but Nancy was the only one hit. Her ankle nearly severed, she suffered heavy blood loss. The raft had no two-way radio and scant emergency supplies, but help finally arrived and Nancy was transported to the hospital in Jackson Hole, where she stabilized and began the process of recovery. On July 1, Beaumont brought champagne to her bedside, and they toasted their anniversary. Less than a week later, on July 7, out of the blue, a blood clot tore loose and blocked Nancy’s pulmonary artery, and suddenly she died.45 Beaumont immediately called Ansel, and they grieved in shock together.46
Ironically, the place where the tree struck the Newhalls’ raft was quite near the bend of the Snake River featured in Ansel’s famous photograph The Tetons and the Snake River. After that, every time he looked at that image, Ansel saw the site of Nancy’s accident. That negative was the very last one he printed before his death, in 1984.
Beaumont brought Nancy’s ashes to Carmel. On August 18, 1974, after a short service at their home, Ansel and Virginia walked down with Beaumont to the beach below and watched as he waded out into the cove and slowly sowed the Pacific with Nancy’s remains.47
If Ansel had a soul mate, it probably was Nancy. She was everything he ever hoped to find in a woman: brilliant, independent, full of energy and enthusiasm, physically attractive, and devoted to photography. There has been speculation for years about whether she and Ansel were lovers, but neither Virginia nor Beaumont believed that anything physical had happened between them.48 Nancy adored Beaumont, and he her. Ansel possessed many old-fashioned morals. True, he was not always a faithful husband, but he drew the line at affairs with married women, and especially when the married woman was the wife of his best friend.
Beaumont, as Nancy had long known, was not a man to live alone. Writing to Ansel in 1973, she informed him that if she died before Beaumont, some fine woman would soon be caring for him, and with her complete blessing. On May 22, 1975, he married Christi, who filled his life with “affection and very thoughtful companionship.”49 Beaumont and Christi built a house in Santa
Fe designed around both their work, with one wing for him, another for her, and a central shared living area. Christi planted gorgeous gardens of flowers and vegetables that Beaumont loved to photograph.
While he had earned his reputation as a historian, Beaumont had also been a serious photographer, although he had refused to promote his own images as long as he worked in museums. He now hired as his assistant David Scheinbaum, an able young photographer who not only made prints from his old negatives but assisted him in the making of new ones. Much to Beaumont’s pleasure, galleries began to exhibit and sell his work.
Although they were divorced in 1985, Beaumont and Christi continued to share their house; as his health declined, her supportive presence enabled him to remain at home. He spent his last years writing his autobiography; Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography was published posthumously in the autumn of 1993.
In August 1992, the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles acquired Beaumont’s and Nancy’s archives. That same month, Christi adopted a baby, whom she named Theo.50 Beaumont was proud to claim him as his son, and Theo made a delightful addition to his last months. Beaumont died on February 26, 1993, after suffering a stroke.51 With him, those generations so crucial to the advancement of photography as a fine art in the twentieth century, led by Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Cunningham, Lange, Steichen, White, and Nancy and Ansel, came to an end. The string had run out, but the battle had been won.