Ansel Adams

by Mary Street Alinder

  All three premiered on Friday night, February 19. The streets were thronged with hundreds of people. As his birthday gift from the staff, I had a computerized electronic horn that could play fifty different tunes installed in his big old white Cadillac embellished with a “Save Mono Lake” bumper sticker. Ansel got a huge kick out of this toy, and after each opening, the streets in front jammed with people singing impromptu “Happy Birthday”s, he would drive musically away with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” or “The Marseillaise,” leaving smiles of astonishment in his wake. For Ansel, it was a grand evening.

  His birthday dinner the next night was an extravaganza for two hundred, hosted by the Friends of Photography and organized by Jim and me. We wanted it to be an evening of great fun, leavened with the surprise bestowed on the birthday boy by the French Consul, of the title of Commander of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France. Toasts were offered by such luminaries as Richard Oldenburg, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Jehanne Salinger, a dear friend of Ansel’s for fifty years and mother of the famous Pierre.

  The meal, cooked by Ansel’s favorite caterer, Michael Jones of Carmel’s A Moveable Feast, began with Ansel’s beloved sorrel soup and ended with an untraditional birthday cake. In full regalia, the marching band of a local high school escorted the cake grandly past the tables and presented it, ablaze with eighty candles, to Ansel. The cake was to have been a vertical, three-dimensional chocolate version of Half Dome, but too late we discovered that the pastry chef had never been to Yosemite; the resultant creation more closely resembled Devil’s Tower in Wyoming as seen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it was nonetheless a delicious mountain of chocolate, and Ansel blew out the candles with gusto.

  I had spent months trying to figure out what to give Ansel, who professed not to really want anything for this momentous birthday. And then one day it came to me: he had instructed me that when he died, he did not want a funeral, adding, “If you must do something, have some music for my friends.”

  With great excitement, I ran downstairs to share my idea with Virginia. Why not have the music with friends while Ansel was still alive? His favorite pianist was Vladimir Ashkenazy. There were many technical virtuosos, Ansel felt, but Ashkenazy’s touch was the most extraordinary, and his interpretation truest to the music—and perhaps, as well, closest to how Ansel himself would have liked to play it.

  I asked Virginia if she might be willing to split the cost with me. She was as delighted with the idea as I was and clasped both of my hands in hers as we both literally danced in a little circle of joy. In a more sober moment, I worried that I could not afford my half of the fee, but then I decided what the hell. Somehow I would get the money. It would be worth it.

  We knew of Ashkenazy; we did not know Ashkenazy. I found the name and address of his agent in New York and sent a letter asking if the pianist would play a private concert at Ansel and Virginia’s home in celebration of Ansel’s eightieth birthday. Amazingly, we soon received a handwritten reply from Ashkenazy himself. He was a fan of Ansel Adams’s! He would be pleased to perform, although he had never before agreed to a private house concert.

  We kept all of this a secret from Ansel for as long as we could, but finally it had to come out: Ashkenazy was to arrive two days early to practice, and before that we had to remove Ansel’s treasured Mason and Hamlin piano and replace it with a Steinway. Ashkenazy is a Steinway artist, and he also told us he might destroy Ansel’s old piano with the force of his playing. His only other stipulation was that we engage his piano technician in San Francisco to tune and maintain the instrument until the performance. I tracked down a suitable and rentable Steinway and corralled the technician.

  Ansel was completely happy; it was the perfect gift. Ashkenazy practiced all day long for two days, and we listened with our full attention to every minute. It was such a privilege to hear him play and replay, again and again, the same troubling passages, although they sounded quite perfect to us. Everyone kept hidden in adjoining rooms so as not to distract him.

  I finally decided I must get closer to where he was playing and feel the music move through my body. Quietly and oh so slowly, I crawled on my hands and knees from the workroom across the entry, but just when I thought I was safe, rounding the corner toward the kitchen, my lowered head met up with a pair of shoes. Tilting my head upward, I saw Ansel, hiding himself in a small recess. Both of us were guilty as charged, Ansel trying to stifle his laughter.

  At two in the afternoon on Thursday, April 29, 1982, Vova (we now addressed Ashkenazy by his nickname) performed Beethoven’s Sonata in A Major, op. 101, no. 28, and Sonata in E Major, op. 109, no. 30. After an intermission, he presented five pieces by Chopin, Nocturne in B-flat Minor, op. 9, no. 1; Nocturne in B Major, op. 9, no. 3; Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, op. 44; Impromptu in F-sharp Major, op. 36; and Scherzo in C-sharp Minor, op. 39, no. 3.

  It was a transcendent performance. Led by Ansel, we all flew to our feet and clapped and bravoed until we no longer could. It was time to party! I had asked Ashkenazy what his favorite food was, and Russian that he is, he had replied, “Caviar.” We had a kilo of caviar air freighted to Carmel.

  Following the concert, I walked back to the office to check on our children, whom I had closeted close enough that they could hear but far enough away that they wouldn’t have to sit still the whole time. I found Jasmine, Jesse, and Zachary staring in perfect awe at Ashkenazy, who was seated cross-legged on top of my desk with a big tin of caviar in one hand while devouring the roe with the fingers of his other hand, intent on leaving no evidence. Although not the biggest of bodies, he polished off the entire kilo with a satisfied smile.

  This event concluded with a fantasy ending for me. Ansel, greatly moved by both the performance and the days spent with Vova, took Ashkenazy into the workroom and asked him to pick out his two favorite photographs. That was the only payment (besides the caviar) that the pianist would accept; my fear of having to take out a second mortgage on our house to pay for my share of the concert evaporated.

  Broad-ranging though his interests could be, Ansel was not well acquainted with pop culture in any form. The last movie he had seen was probably in the thirties, his taste in music allowed for few composers born in this century, and his reading material was usually of a serious nature. Television was a late addition to the Adamses’ Carmel household and rarely turned on except for the six-o’clock news.

  If Ansel was quite aware of current politicians, he was absolutely in the dark when it came to celebrities. He just did not care. In early 1982, Clint Eastwood, another Carmel resident, telephoned and asked if he could come by and get some advice from Ansel about photographs for the upcoming U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. As he would to any such request, Ansel generously replied, “Sure, come on over tomorrow afternoon,” having no idea who Eastwood was until nearly the entire staff swooned.

  The appointed hour chimed, the doorbell rang, but Ansel was back in the darkroom, excited about a print in progress. Although there were five people working, not one consented to answer that darn door, so the “painful” task was up to me. I slid the door open, and the man in the movies stood facing me. I ushered him in and explained that Ansel would be out soon, but just how soon, I did not know—once he was in the darkroom, there was no telling. I showed Eastwood around the gallery and began yammering to him at length about the various photographs. (He was not one to make small talk.) After forty-five grueling minutes of my spiel (my normal loquaciousness was definitely challenged), with hardly one intervening word from Eastwood, Ansel at last emerged, grasped the actor’s hand in a firm shake, and sat him down for their little talk, which was far more brief than my monologue. Exit Eastwood.

  Garry Trudeau and Jane Pauley fared better. While trekking in the Himalayas, Trudeau had run into the photographer Marion Patterson, who discovered that her longtime friend Ansel was one of Trudeau’s heroes. She supplied him with AA’s address, and Trudea
u scribbled a postcard with a cartoon showing himself and his wife contemplating nature. Doonesbury was, in turn, Ansel’s very favorite comic strip, the first thing he turned to in the morning paper, and he was hugely tickled to learn that Trudeau respected him. He invited the two to come out for a visit, which they soon did, causing Ansel to smile like the Cheshire cat. Garry’s gift of all the Doonesbury books instantly enriched Ansel’s sleepless nights with a hefty ration of laughter. After Ansel died, Garry very generously donated a large number of original strips to be sold to raise money for the Friends of Photography.

  In 1983, then-mayor Dianne Feinstein requested that a large exhibition of Ansel’s photographs be sent to San Francisco’s sister city, Shanghai, China. Jim, Robert Baker, and I were honored to be appointed the experts to accompany the show. The Chinese hosts installed the nearly two hundred prints with great sensitivity, hanging them on brightly lighted and freshly painted white walls above polished floors with welcome pots of greenery in the corners of each of the many galleries. Ansel’s show proved extraordinarily popular—tickets were sold out by eight o’clock each morning. Thousands of people moved slowly in reverential silence through the exhibition, staring rapt for long periods at image after image; there was no problem with translation. The show, Ansel Adams: Photographer, was then invited to move to the National Museum of Art in Beijing, where it became the first exhibition by an American artist to be so honored since the Chinese revolution.

  Some friendships combined work and pleasure. After wrestling with the Museum Sets and finally completing them in 1982, Ansel began once more to hear the call of photography, which for him meant the call of the outdoors.4 He had always enjoyed having companions along while he photographed in the Sierra, on the trail with Cedric or other members of the club. Sometimes on a rare free Saturday or Sunday, when the quiet of his house proved too much for him to bear, Ansel would call Jim to ask if he would like to go photographing. Ansel and Jim had become good friends by this time, seeing themselves as comrades under the dark cloth, so to speak, although neither was using a view camera. Ansel knew that since he assumed the leadership of the Friends, Jim had had little time for his own photography and welcomed any chance to expose some rolls. Together, they drove over most of the roads of Monterey County, stopping when either one saw something he liked.5

  On our periodic trips to San Francisco, Virginia and I would take the backseat of Ansel’s 1977 Caddie, each with plenty of reading material, while the boys sat up front. Just as Ansel and Jim were camera buddies, Virginia and I were book buddies. Their cameras and tripods stashed in the trunk, Jim drove and Ansel navigated, an open bag of cookies and a sack of hard candies between them.

  The men followed every devious route and back road possible, so that what should have been a three-hour trip often took most of a day. They did not need much of an excuse to pull over, get out, walk around, and confer with great seriousness about a scene’s photographic possibilities. Without saying a word, Virginia and I would just pick up our books and continue where we had left off.

  Often we would wend our way up Highway One all the way to the city. Ansel loved to stop for lunch at Duarte’s, an old tavern in Pescadero that had knotty-pine walls and a bar with pool tables and served artichoke soup and homemade olallieberry pie à la mode.

  Home base in San Francisco was the house of Otto and Sue Meyer, steadfast friends of Ansel and Virginia’s who lived just two doors away from Ansel’s old family abode in West Clay Park, on Twenty-fourth Avenue. With affection, Ansel dubbed their place the Meyerhof; he had recuperated there for two weeks following his open-heart surgery in 1979.6 The Meyers always welcomed Ansel and Virginia and their supporting cast with open arms. As president of Paul Masson Vineyards, Otto had hired Ansel in 1961 to document the building of the company’s new champagne cellars in Saratoga. He was a longtime trustee of the Friends of Photography and a pillar of the San Francisco opera community. By all appearances the spark plug that kept Otto’s engine going, Sue was a leader in the arts community, having blazed the trail for the acceptance of contemporary crafts as art in San Francisco with her groundbreaking Fort Mason gallery Meyer, Breier, Weiss, next door to the famous vegetarian restaurant Greens.7

  One morning at breakfast in late 1982, when the Alinders and Adamses were all comfortably ensconced at the Meyers’, Ansel suggested that he and Jim go out and make a day of it. Agreed. Virginia and I snuck sly smiles at each other, already luxuriating in the peaceful day before us.

  Ansel dressed in attire appropriate to the occasion: lug-soled boots, dark trousers, bold plaid shirt, red photographer’s vest, and Stetson set at a jaunty angle. With their dueling Hasselblads and various lenses, our intrepid men rode off. (It was to Jim’s benefit that they both used the same camera, as it allowed him to borrow Ansel’s complete assortment of the latest lenses if the image dictated it.)

  Ansel directed Jim across the Golden Gate Bridge and up along the headlands that oppose San Francisco. At a turnout, they turned in. Almost every place they photographed on these camera trips, Ansel had been to before, often many times. In the Bay Area as in Yosemite, his best pictures were made at locations that he knew very well, although changes of season, light, and weather could make all the difference.

  They both photographed the Golden Gate Bridge. Ansel made some particularly strong compositions, including one looking through the bridge’s north tower and vertical suspension cables to the gray silhouette of the city beyond, which I later selected for his autobiography.8 Ansel found this viewpoint a bit mournful. As a boy, he had often taken the ferry across to these same steep hills, where he had thought nothing of hiking up and down and up again. These memories sadly reminded him of his age and precarious health. Confined to the pavement, he suggested to Jim that they drive on.9

  Their next stop was an abandoned military gun emplacement, empty and cold but with gray concrete bunkers enlivened by particularly energetic, almost refined, graffiti. Although this was unlikely Adams subject matter, Ansel’s eye stopped as he began visualizing first one image, then another. His enthusiasm building, Ansel exposed four negatives. Jim made a portrait of an obviously happy and relaxed Ansel sitting in a recess of the bunker, smiling right at the camera.

  Another reason that Ansel and Jim had such a good time together was that they were both always ready to eat, and neither was terribly fussy about what or where. Now, with their dinner bells ringing, Ansel knew exactly where to go for lunch: with pride he guided Jim to an old building in Sausalito, the former site of a famous brothel, now home to particularly succulent hamburgers.

  Sated for the moment, they drove north and into the hills about San Rafael, where Ansel remembered a fine cemetery that he wanted to photograph again. They cruised street after street, but to no avail. After photographing an old white church sans graveyard, Ansel gave up, and they headed west to the ocean near Bolinas. After a couple of exposures of the weathered side of a building, it was time for a snack—an ice cream cone would do just fine. Nothing further appealed to them visually, however, and they wandered back to Hotel Meyer for short naps before dinner.

  When he returned to his darkroom in Carmel a couple of days later, Ansel was still excited about the graffiti photographs. Having developed the negatives and made two large prints of a luminous orb of paint underlined with quick brushstrokes at its center, he tacked one print up with pushpins in the gallery area of the house and, after some deliberation, sat down and began to write about it.

  For Ansel, the graffiti represented the power and beauty of art that could never be put into words. He had no idea why it had been painted or by whom, but to him, that made no difference. Recalling Stieglitz’s view, Ansel saw this picture as a symbol of the elusiveness of trying to define art, the basic quality that cannot be verbalized. Graffiti, Abandoned Military Installation, Golden Gate Recreational Area, California, 1982 became a chapter in 1983’s Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.10

  Ansel and Jim continued to photograph toget
her all through 1983, perhaps a day every other month, Ansel’s health permitting. One Saturday morning in February 1984, just as I was opening my eyes, I heard a sharp knock on our front door. Wrapping a robe about myself, I answered it to find Ansel on the other side. Almost bashfully, he asked, “Can Jim come out and photograph?” though I knew he meant “play.”

  Ansel came in and stood behind the couch watching cartoons with the kids as Jim and I got dressed. Eager to get going, his fancy not caught by Scooby Doo, Ansel wandered out onto our back deck. Fog covered the Monterey Peninsula, our house included. The sun’s light was diffused and flat through this damp shroud.

  Jim habitually made portraits of the many great photographers who came to our house over the years, and for just this purpose, he had attached an old movie screen under an eave on the deck that he could unroll and use as a plain backdrop. He now pulled out a kitchen stool and asked Ansel if he would sit for him. Ansel kindly obliged, and with his trusty Hasselblad on a tripod, Jim made the best portrait of Ansel that ever was. It was the unanimous choice for the cover image of Ansel’s autobiography, and I have always thought that one of the major reasons that the book became a bestseller was the warmth of his face in that photograph. Ansel himself seems to come right through the image and into life.

  Next, Ansel picked up his own camera and photographed Jim and me. And then they were out the door and down the road to the oldest grove of Monterey cypress in the world, tramping around and making exposure after exposure—all in all, a fine way to spend a Saturday.