Ansel Adams

by Ansel Adams

  Many of Cedric’s photographic portraits were very fine, and a good portion of his prints were excellent. Somewhat like Edward Weston, he had a specifically personal technique, hence a disregard for many of the basic technical principles of photography. However, in his continuous search for artistic identity, Cedric often came under the influence of admiring flatterers and would be swayed in his approach to photography with unpredictable results. A noted pictorialist, Nicholas Haz, admired Cedric’s work and convinced him that the formula for creativity was freedom from rules and technique. Cedric’s photography never entirely recovered from the self-indulgence this fostered.

  Cedric was greatly influenced by Elbert Hubbard’s doctrines of naturalistic simplicity, and I am sure William Morris would have accepted him in his circle. Walt Whitman, Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter were Cedric’s saints, and Fritz Kreisler, the great violinist, his prophet.

  I became a regular at the frequent, happy, and informal evenings at Cedric’s Berkeley home, where I met many of the people who were to become so important to me in future years. The route to Berkeley by ferryboat, train, and streetcar was long and circuitous, taking nearly four hours round trip, but the journey was always worth it.

  I was beguiled by the unique architecture and spirit of Cedric’s Bernard Maybeck–designed studio home. Maybeck was a magnificent architect, with an incredible wealth of imagination and taste. He had created a marvelous home for Cedric out of an old barn tucked away in redwoods and lush foliage on Etna Street, a few blocks from the University of California. One of the most remarkable buildings I have ever seen is the still amazingly contemporary Christian Science Church in Berkeley that Maybeck created and built in 1911. He also designed the one building from the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco that still stands—the Palace of Fine Arts, now sheltering the Exploratorium, a “hands on” science museum. The functional design of his elegant structures was, in my opinion, far more humane and workable than were those of Frank Lloyd Wright. And, Maybeck’s roofs seldom leaked, a common complaint of the occupants of Wright’s masterpieces.

  Despite the fact that his first wife, Mildred, and daughter Alberta were both intelligent and charming, Cedric was a victim of an unrequited desire for the ideal woman. He had a stunning affair, which I am sure was unrealized, with an impossibly perfect creature, who quite unexpectedly married a motorcycle racing star! I had Cedric’s case of hysterics on my hands for a week. He smothered his woes with marriage to Rhea Ufford, a pianist. They had a reasonably happy life together and produced two children, David and Joanne.

  What was both a curse and a blessing for Cedric was that he was always comfortable financially and had absolutely no concept of what the average material condition of most people might be. I have found this true of many idealists and have wondered what restricted funds might have done to Cedric’s continual devotion to the unrealities of life. I believe he would have overcome any misfortune because he had such faith in beauty and the human potential. So confident was Cedric of the humanizing powers of the mountains that he wanted to invite Joseph Stalin on a Sierra Club outing! As an old mutual friend said of his intention, “Well, you never can tell, he just might have pulled it off!”

  There was never anyone more at home in the mountains than Cedric, though he seldom scaled peaks and heartily disliked what he called “display climbing”—chalking off fourteen-thousand-foot crags as trophies. We joined in a disregard for the naming of things and were skeptical of those nonprofessionals who go through the wilderness classifying and labeling everything in sight. We both agreed that mountains and places probably should have names, but that a simple flower gains little (except to botanists) by carrying a ponderous Latin classification.

  My involvement with the Sierra Club was a basic introduction to the concepts of wilderness and conservation. Cedric was never directly involved with the conservation-environmental aspects of the Sierra Club activities, but he was devoted to the Sierra at a very human and creative level and made impressive contributions through the pairing of personally written associations with his photographs. We all have our ways in which we serve best; some work independently in the world at large, some work within the structure of organizations, and others create personal prompts and messages in various art forms which support the dominant theme: protection of the environment for those qualities and benefits only the earth can provide for now and for the future.

  In 1960 the Sierra Club published Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth, a beautiful posthumous book of his photographs and writings edited by Nancy Newhall. In this book Cedric wrote:

  Out of the vast process of evolution through need,

  out of the cycle of passing forms,

  arises eternal, elemental beauty.

  Intense beauty is liberation.

  For a while, all seemed well with Cedric until he suffered a stroke. His last years were complex and difficult. He dedicated himself to writing and mimeographing hundreds of pages against all educational systems in general. His daughter fell in love and married a teacher. This was the last straw; nothing could have been more destructive to Cedric’s intensified ego. Sadly we observed another personality, rigid and dictatorial, emerging in this later part of Cedric’s life; a painful experience for all his friends.

  I remember well the younger Cedric as almost an occupant of another world and a creator and messenger of beauty and mysteries. Perhaps his greatest gift was that of imparting confidence to those who were wavering on the edge of fear and indecision; often it was me. We shared much, playing music together, hiking together, writing letters with our deepest feelings, bolstering each other through topsy-turvy romances with dream girls and real girls. In 1937 I wrote:

  Dear Cedric,

  A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that related to those who are loved and those who are real friends.

  For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.

  Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things. Children are not only of flesh and blood—children may be ideas, thoughts, emotions. The person of the one who is loved is a form composed of a myriad mirrors reflecting and illuminating the powers and thoughts and the emotions that are within you, and flashing another kind of light from within. No words or deeds may encompass it.

  Friendship is another form of love—more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean reality of granite.

  Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these.

  Ansel

  4.

  Family

  WHEN I WAS A YOUNG CHILD, THE ADAMS FAMILY was prosperous. We frequently visited my grandparents’ residence, “Unadilla,” in Atherton. It was a stately old home with extensive grounds, typical of a wealthy family of the times. I recall the spacious rooms, the heavy furniture, period oil paintings, and several servants, including two gardeners. The great oaks stood at discrete distances from one another with skirts of English ivy that climbed far up the large trunks. A wide and generous staircase led from the lawns to the broad porch with rocking chairs and awnings. The first floor had a parlor, a sitting room, a dining room, a smoking room, and a very ample kitchen and pantry. The second floor had numerous bedrooms, all furnished with mahogany beds, tables, and chests, marble wherever there was a flat surface, and large windows with double curtains. There was also a tow
er with a curving staircase where I could sit and read while looking over the oak groves and mountains in the west or the marshes leading to San Francisco Bay to the east. The tower was a wonderful place to be in a storm and there I could be found, gloating at the wind and rain from my lofty, secure perch.

  The mournful whistle and roar of the trains, passing night and day, became part of the total experience. Many a night I lay in my comfortable bed and waited for the Doppler-distorted whistle with its swelling, then subsiding rumble as the trains plowed through the dark countryside south to San Jose or north to San Francisco.

  Grandfather Adams died in 1907 when I was five years old and “Unadilla” burned to the ground the next year. I remember my father receiving the news about “Unadilla” over the telephone. He hung up the phone and, with a sad and pale manner, went upstairs and closed the door. My grandfather’s business had failed during this same period: three depressions, the loss of twenty-seven lumber ships and three mills all within a decade.

  My father bravely attacked the problems of regaining the family fortunes, but there was not much money and we literally went on rations. The only other member of the family interested in sorting out the financial mess was my wealthy Uncle Ansel Easton. My father, Uncle Ansel, and Cedric’s father, George Wright, incorporated the Classen Chemical Company, a handsome factory at the site of one of my grandfather’s lumber mills at Hadlock, Washington. They had acquired the rights to a process that produced two-hundred-proof industrial alcohol from sawdust. Its location in the heart of the lumber country was ideal; huge quantities of sawdust and chips were free for the asking. Barges were acquired for transportation of this material from all parts of Puget Sound. The first alcohol produced met the highest quality tests.

  In the meantime, what was known as the Hawaii Sugar Trust woke up to the fact that Classen was to be a prime competitor. The Hawaiian firm used sugarcane for the production of alcohol through a somewhat different process. The Hawaii Sugar Trust put the Classen Chemical Company out of business by buying up the stock, discharging the directors and executives, and operating the plant in a thoroughly destructive way.

  It was a terrible blow to my father to learn that his trusted brother-in-law—my Uncle Ansel—and George Wright—his good friend and attorney—had each secretly sold their one-third interest to the Hawaiian group for a handsome sum, knowingly providing the controlling interest. It was one more financial calamity, made all the more difficult to endure because of the betrayals. It ensured near-poverty for my father for the rest of his life.

  Named after Uncle Ansel Easton, I ceased using Easton in my name when twenty years later I realized the enormity of what he had done. My photographs from this time can be dated because of this decision. Through 1932 I signed Ansel Easton Adams, then Ansel E. Adams in 1933, and finally Ansel Adams from 1934 to the present day.

  The Bank of California and my grandfather and father had always worked in close collaboration. There was mutual trust; loans were made with the assurance they would be repaid. The bank financed my father as he attempted to use the Classen property to launch a process related to the mineral antimony. His head chemist was not a bright individual, and the result was another debacle. My father simply was not a good businessman and he could not cope with the deviousness that confronted him at most every turn. The bank took over the property, but they went beyond the call of duty in supporting my father over a number of years of hopeful exploration of enterprises that could be developed at this location. Years later I photographed the remains of the old factory and thought of it as a haunted shell of true disaster. Lumbering in the area had diminished to the vanishing point, and the entire region was quite depressed.

  My father struggled to make a good life for me. I did not realize until many years had passed how tough it really was; the family fortune had diminished to a memory and my father was desperately seeking a position. It was very difficult for this formerly affluent man to find an appropriate job.

  I recall the great psychological depression my mother suffered through these years. I could not understand it, but I was quite aware that something was wrong. My mother simply gave up in the face of continuing misfortune and spent much time staring at the floor and brooding over fate and circumstance. She could speak of little else but the crooks who did my father in. It was a time when my father desperately needed support and cheer and these were sadly lacking. Aunt Mary did little to help the situation, moaning and groaning along with my mother and blaming my father for “not using his brains.” He finally got a job selling insurance for the West Coast Life Insurance Company and had to spend several months in Salinas. It was a lonesome period for me.

  I think often of one bleak evening with a strong and bitter wind and no rain to console the tumult. My father returned home to the usual lack of sympathy, taking recourse in some bourbon, which he richly deserved. Mother was aloofly critical. Aunt Mary was quite impossible, sniffing with disdain and saying Father should not appear in such a condition before his son. I could never recall him exceeding the limits of genteel tottering and could not grasp why he should not have a drink if he wanted. I remember the last, slightly warm rays of the sun, shredded by the clouds, and the strange noises of the wind as it whistled about the house. My father went upstairs to bed, holding firmly to the banister. I went to my room and played with my Anchor Blocks. I started to build a powerhouse, German-style, but my set of blocks was not large enough to manage it. I loved building with those blocks, seeing a structure take form in the earthy reds, yellows, and blues of various shapes and dimensions. I had started music lessons at this time and sensed a relationship of precision between the abstract notes and the creation of structures with my blocks. My supreme achievement was a Gothic cathedral that the family cat demolished by smoothing against it.

  The delicacy of chance and the uncertainty of fate grow upon me as I come to the last act of my personal performance. I can still see my father with slight instability navigating the stairs, my mother’s ill-concealed embarrassment, and Aunt Mary’s stern displeasure. What impresses me now, nearly seventy-five years later, was the total integration of my family, the wind, the last sun rays, and the consolation of playing with my blocks.

  Sharp visions of childhood remain engraved in memory with an intensity far beyond their factual experience. Re-created in later years, they sometimes serve as catalysts for a better understanding of many occurrences. I recall one precious moment of an early summer. The persistent fog had lifted and the warm sun streamed into the dining room through the west-facing windows. I was setting the table for our supper. The light was unforgettable. Fog was still pouring through the Golden Gate and the foghorns could be heard. Why should a situation such as this create a lasting revelation? Some might say that such memories are déjà vu, that we are building castles of imagination and nostalgic affirmations. I do not believe this. I feel that such events as this and the night I realized my parents’ unhappiness offer a glimpse into a world-pattern beyond our conscious awareness.

  After failing at a series of jobs, in the early 1920s my father became the secretary of the Merchant’s Exchange Association. He managed their office building on California Street. On its ground floor there was Maritime Hall, the center of the shipping business in San Francisco. The fourteenth floor was occupied by the Commercial Club, a businessmen’s lunch club. The floors in between were leased as offices. Each month my father would make out the rent bills and I would take them around the building to all the tenants. Every two weeks there was payday for the building’s employees. The wages were put, as cash, into little, sealed envelopes with the name of the recipient and the amount typed across the top. The janitors, engineers, and elevator operators came to the office for their pay, where I doled out the envelopes. I tried to help my father whenever I could spare the time from my music. Each employee counted his pay carefully, smiled, and then signed that it had been received if they could write or placed an X if they could not.

  When the cras
h of 1929 came and things went sour for business in general, my father tried to hold the Merchant’s Exchange together. The board of directors, quite scared, were insistent that all tenants in arrears be evicted with dispatch. My father argued that many of them had occupied their space for years; he felt sure they would pay up when they could, “For God’s sake, give them a chance!” The board refused, whereupon my father said he would leave if they insisted upon the evictions. He would have been fired except that one member of the board, Mr. Henry Wangenheim, stoutly stood up for my father and persuaded the board to admit that a tenant removed would merely leave unoccupied space, but if retained might, when recovery came about, pay up the rent past due. By the late 1930s, when the Depression had eased, over ninety percent of the tenants had paid their rent debt in full.

  Through these years my mother continued to fail, first in her lack of support for my father and then in her own stamina and health. Arthritis struck before the age of sixty. After two severe falls, she was eventually confined to a wheelchair. My father blamed himself for her long, slow descent into despair.

  Finally, in 1950, at the age of eighty-seven, my mother went into a coma. My father was bewildered, for now there was truly nothing to be done. We stood around her in a vague state of dread of the inevitable, mixed with hopes that her ending would not be further prolonged. She died quite peacefully of pneumonia, simply ceasing to breathe. I had heard the death rattle before. With my mother it was a long rustling sound combined with an inexpressibly sad sigh. Her eyes were open, of startling clarity and stillness, staring beyond us and beyond the world. The doctor came and signed the death certificate. The undertaker arrived with cool professionalism, moving the wrapped remains to a gurney. My mother was wheeled out of the house and down the walk, through the gate to the awaiting hearse. My father insisted upon following and he stood bareheaded in the drizzle while her body was rolled into the vehicle and the doors closed.