14 Nancy Newhall, The Eloquent Light (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 29.
15 Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 51.
16 Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 516.
17 Ibid., 97.
18 Statement made by Yosemite’s Acting Superintendent Benson in 1908. Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 429.
19 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 51–53.
20 Michael Reese II, A Travel Letter—1871: The Yosemite & Napa Valley (San Francisco: Cloister Press, 1988), unpaginated.
21 Shirley Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers (Yosemite: Flying Spur Press, 1975), 22.
22 Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 652.
23 Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, 59.
24 Ibid., 42.
25 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 53.
26 Ansel’s first camera, the Kodak No. 1 Brownie, is in the collection of the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography. Todd Gustavson, Camera, A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital (New York: Sterling Signature, 2009), 148.
27 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 31; Ansel Adams to Mary Bray, summer 1917, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 1.
28 Olive Adams to Charles Adams, June 13, 1917, CCP; Charles Adams to Olive Adams, June 13, 1917, CCP; Charles Adams to Olive Adams, June 18, 1917, CCP; Olive Adams to Charles Adams, June 20, 1917, CCP.
29 Ansel had fond memories of this story and its teller.
30 Ansel Adams, “Francis Holman, 1856–1944,” Sierra Club Bulletin (San Francisco: Sierra Club, October 1944), 47–58.
31 A. Adams and M. Alinder, Autobiography, 54, 56–57.
32 Ansel Adams to Olive Adams, May 26, 1918, in Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 2–3.
33 Ibid. Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister, was a brilliant and popular orator who came to California during the Civil War. He successfully rallied the state to the Northern side and for the preservation of the Union. Ben Tarnoff, The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 19.
34 Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1978, 236. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
35 Jon Stewart, “San Francisco’s Ferocious Flu Season: 1918–19,” San Francisco Chronicle, “This World” section, November 5, 1989, 13; and Carl Zimmer, “In 1918, Bad Timing Fed a Pandemic,” New York Times, May 6, 2014, D3.
36 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 54.
37 Ibid.
38 Virginia and Ansel Adams, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1940), 76.
39 A. Adams, “Francis Holman.”
40 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 54.
41 A scientific study to quantify the effects of nature on man concluded that “as well as sustaining life, natural environments help foster . . . inner peace and a renewal of mental energy.” Terry Hartig, Marlis Mang, Gary W. Evans, “Restorative Effects of Natural Environment Experiences,” Environment and Behavior 23, no. 1 (January 1991): 3–26.
42 A. Adams, “Francis Holman.” Uncle Frank died in Carmel, California, on January 16, 1944.
43 John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 116–117.
44 Horace M. Albright, The Birth of the National Park Service, as told to Robert Cahn (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1985), 5.
45 Brooks, “Yosemite: The Seeing Eye and the Written Word,” 28.
46 Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, 3.
47 Sargent, Yosemite: The First 100 Years, 30.
48 “Act of August 25, 1916 (39 Stat.L., 535)—An Act to Establish a National Park Service . . .,” reprinted in Stanford E. Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite 1855–1985 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), 2.
49 Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, 12.
50 Ansel confessed that Muir bored him in a letter to David McAlpin, October 2, 1939, CCP.
51 David and Victoria Sheff, “The Playboy Interview,” Playboy, May 1983.
3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISION
1 Peter E. Palmquist, “Carleton E. Watkins: Notes from the Historical Record,” in Carleton E. Watkins (San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 1989), 213–217.
2 Peter E. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer of the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 12.
3 Ibid.
4 Shirley Sargent, Yosemite: The First 100 Years, 1890–1990 (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1988).
5 Mary S. Alinder, “Carleton Watkins,” in The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 3rd ed. (Boston and London: Focal Press, 1993), 865.
6 Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, 217.
7 Ted Orland, Man and Yosemite (Santa Cruz: The Image Continuum Press, 1985), 56–58.
8 Weston J. Naef, Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860–1885, in collaboration with James N. Wood (Buffalo and New York: Albright-Knox Art Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975), 175.
9 Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows: Edward Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (New York: Viking, 2003).
10 J. J. Reilly, who specialized in stereographs, established the first photography studio in the valley in 1875. Linda Wedel Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Yosemite National Park: U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987), 147, 149.
11 Thomas Curran, Fiske, the Cloudchaser (Oakland and Yosemite: The Oakland Museum and the Yosemite Natural History Association, 1981), unpaginated.
12 Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 676.
13 Leonard Shlain, Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 100.
14 John Szarkowski, American Landscapes (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981), 6.
15 Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West (New York: Harrison House, 1988), 231–309.
16 Ibid., 262.
17 Ansel Adams, “The Horace M. Albright Conservation Lectureship: The Role of the Artist in Conservation,” lecture given at University of California, Berkeley, College of Natural Resources, Department of Forestry & Conservation, March 3, 1975, 2.
18 Information gathered by the author in the course of many conversations with Ansel on the subject during the preparation of his autobiography.
19 Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 49.
20 Ansel Adams to Mary Bray, June 23, 1916, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 1.
21 An entire page from the album, including the two photographs discussed, is reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, facing page 1.
22 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 69.
23 Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1978, 228.
24 Ibid., 37–38. Ansel’s Vest Pocket Kodak Autographic is in the collection of the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography. This was a folding camera, which Kodak boasted was “so flat and smooth and small as to go readily into a vest pocket.” The autographic feature allowed the photographer to etch a brief caption onto the negative. Todd Gustavson, Camera, A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital (New York: Sterling Signature, 2009), 179.
25 Ansel Adams to Mary Bray, Summer 1917, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 1.
> 26 Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 447–448.
27 Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 49.
28 Peter Palmquist, “William E. Dassonville: An Appreciation,” Susan Herzig and Paul Hertzmann, eds., Dassonville (Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1999), 25–27; Nancy Newhall, The Eloquent Light (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 31.
29 “Awards—Architectural Subjects, Closed October 31, 1918,” Photo-Era: The American Journal of Photography 42 (January 1919): 32. The photograph by Ansel was not reproduced.
30 Imogen Cunningham, Imogen Cunningham: Photographs (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1970), pl. 4.
31 Ansel Adams to Charles Adams, June 8, 1920, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 6–8.
32 Virginia and Ansel Adams, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1940), 45.
33 Diamond Cascade is reproduced in A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 72.
34 H. Wallach, “Bromoil Process,” The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 62; Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 17–19.
35 Sierra Club Bulletin 11, no. 3 (1922), plates XCI and LXXXV.
36 The earliest book in which Ansel’s photographs appear is Katherine Ames Taylor, Lights and Shadows of Yosemite (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1926).
37 Overland Monthly 78, no. 6 (December 1921): 23; R. R. Greenwood, “Whisperings,” ibid. A poem by Ansel’s uncle Dr. William L. Adams, who had died in 1919, appeared two pages earlier.
38 This is how Ansel usually described the situation when he lectured.
39 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 160–161.
40 Both the photograph and its verso with Ansel’s handwritten price list are reproduced ibid., 161. Ansel did not purchase his Korona view camera with its 6½ x 8½-inch format until about 1923, but his price list of prints for the Baptist Chinese Kindergarten is written in his child’s hand rather than in the studied, flowing script he had achieved by 1923, which dates this assignment to about 1920. The 6½ x 8½-inch camera was probably borrowed for the occasion.
41 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 73.
42 Ibid.
43 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 256–258. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
44 Ibid.
45 Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 17–19.
46 Ibid.
47 Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, “Photography,” Quarterly Review 101 (April 1857): 442–468. Reprinted in Beaumont Newhall, Photography: Essays & Images (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980), 91.
48 Peter Henry Emerson, Photograms of the Year 1900, reprinted in Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949; rev. ed. 1980), 105.
49 Sue Davidson Lowe, Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
50 Doris Bry, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1965), 14.
51 Alfred Stieglitz, “The Photo-Secession,” reprinted in B. Newhall, Photography: Essays & Images, 167.
52 Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), unpaginated.
53 Sadakichi Hartmann, “A Plea for Straight Photography,” reprinted in B. Newhall, Photography: Essay & Images, 185–188.
54 Bry, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer, 15.
55 Steichen, A Life in Photography; Grace M. Mayer, “Biographical Outline,” Steichen the Photographer (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1963), 69–75.
56 Maria Morris Hambourg, The New Vision: Photography Between the Wars (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 7.
57 Sarah Greenough, “Paul Strand, 1916: Applied Intelligence,” Sarah Greenough, Modern Art and America, Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000), 247–259.
58 Alison Nordström, “Lewis Hine,” Lewis Hine from the Collections of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2012).
59 Sarah Greenough, Paul Strand: An American Vision (New York and Washington, D.C.: Aperture Foundation and National Gallery of Art, 1990), 32–33. A finely printed selection of Strand’s photographs, including those mentioned, are reproduced in this book.
60 Paul Strand, “Photography,” Seven Arts 2 (August 1917): 524–525, reprinted in B. Newhall, Photography: Essays & Images, 219–220.
61 Paul Rosenfeld, Musical Chronicle (1917–1923) (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923). Inscribed in this book in Ansel’s library, in his own hand, is, “Ansel E. Adams from Mrs. Sabin—Dec. 25–1925.” Rosenfeld was a music critic in New York and considered a member of the Stieglitz circle. He was the editor of Seven Arts when Strand’s essay, “Photography,” was published.
62 Adams with M. Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography, 32–33.
63 Ibid., 145.
64 Ibid., 32–37.
65 Ibid., 34.
66 Ansel Adams, foreword to Cedric Wright, Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth, Nancy Newhall, ed. (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960), 9.
67 Edward Carpenter, Angel’s Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and Its Relation to Life (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), 42–45, 64.
68 Edward Carpenter, Towards Democracy (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1909), 260–261.
69 Adams, The Role of the Artist in Conservation, 8; A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 381–385.
70 Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 30, 1925, reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 25–26.
71 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 34–35.
72 Nancy Newhall dates the meeting precisely to April 10, 1927, in The Eloquent Light, 47, the exact day that I believe Ansel made Monolith. However, Albert introduced Ansel to the poet Robinson Jeffers, who presented the photographer with an inscribed volume of Roan Stallion to mark the occasion, dated June 26, 1926, indicating that the Albert-Ansel meeting took place months earlier than she believed.
73 Catherine A. Johnson, wall label for exhibition A Time of Change: Northern California Women Artists, 1895–1920, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1991.
74 Oscar Lewis, A Day with AMB (San Francisco: privately published, 1932), unpaginated, in the collection of Stanford University.
75 Virginia Adams remembered that much of her jewelry and combs for her hair, as well as a variety of objets d’art in her home, all came from Albert. Every time she saw him, he would extract some bauble from his pocket for her. She found him sweetly endearing.
76 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 84. Although largely unknown today, Ina Coolbrith was a popular San Francisco poet in the later nineteenth century and was appointed California’s first Poet Laureate at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Ben Tarnoff, The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 32–36, 254.
77 Ibid., 81–82.
78 Ibid. Today, a portfolio of Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras that is in mint condition is valued at $200,000.
79 Lewis, A Day with AMB.
80 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 47.
81 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 82.
82 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 30.
83 “July Contributors in Brief,” Overland Monthly 85, no. 7 (July 1927).
84 Gump’s hired Ansel in 1929. Nancy Newhall, Notes for The Eloquent Light, CCP.
85 Dorothea Lange, “The Making of a Documentary Photographer,” an oral history conducted 1960–1961 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1968, 113, 115. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
4. MONOLITH
1 Charles Adams to Ansel Adams, July 5, 1922, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 19
16–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 13–15.
2 Anne Adams Helms, The Descendants of David Best and Jane Eliza King Best (Monterey, Calif.: Anne Adams Helms, 1995), 42–63.
3 In 1906, Yosemite’s superintendent used Best’s Studio as an example of “flimsy construction work in the valley.” Linda Wedel Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Yosemite National Park: U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987), 468.
4 Both Harry Cassie Best paintings are reproduced in Helms, The Descendants of David Best and Jane Eliza King Best, 55.
5 Anne Rippey Best died July 9, 1920.
6 Virginia Adams, interview with the author, May 9, 1989.
7 Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987, 228. Virginia Adams in conversation with the interviewers. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
8 Ansel Adams to Charles Adams, July 7, 1922, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 16.
9 Nancy Newhall, The Eloquent Light (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 37.
10 Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 17–19.
11 Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, March 26, 1923, transcription by Nancy Newhall, CCP.
12 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 42.
13 Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, November 15, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 19–20.
14 Helen LeConte, “Reminiscences of LeConte Family Outings, the Sierra Club, and Ansel Adams,” an oral history conduted in 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun.
15 Ansel selected the 1926 version of East Vidette for his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, published in 1927, the project suggested and sponsored by Albert Bender in April 1926. A print of the 1925 East Vidette is now in a private collection.
16 LeConte, “Reminiscences.” Helen remembered that Ansel was “a delightful companion . . . and what a good camper and a good worker and how delightful it was to travel through this country with him, because of course, his eye was so perceptive. He saw so much more than I did, and it made me see more.”
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