Ansel Adams

by Ansel Adams

  He awoke and was appalled by the situation. We kept him in his bag until the various garments had been dried over the fire. Finally, he was damply dressed and steaming before the fire. We took stock of our situation; it was twenty-four long miles to Yosemite. The snow at the present depth would be hard on our burros. We had to cross an exposed pass seven hundred feet higher, and the snow would be deeper as it continued to fall. We knew we must pack up and get over that pass without delay. Breakfast must wait.

  At times the trail was impossible to see. The burros slipped and stumbled on the snow-covered rocks. At Tuolumne Meadows the snow abated but we pressed on, arriving in the valley at seven P.M., very weary and finally having our first meal of the day. We were lucky: four or five inches more snow and we would have had to reluctantly abandon the animals to save ourselves.

  Such frightening experiences did not deter my explorations. I often hiked alone for days, an unsafe practice that is not to be condoned. I am sure that I found myself in many situations of uncommon danger because of my own ignorance and stupidity. However, I continued to treasure my solitary excursions into the Sierra; they gave me many unforgettable days and nights and constant opportunities for photographing.

  In the early spring of 1923, I decided to see the Merced Lake area under snow. It had been a severe winter and there was snow consistently above sixty-five hundred feet. I started out with my sleeping bag, food, and camera. Cooking utensils were stashed at a permanent lean-to campsite near the lake. I was wearing my favorite basketball shoes and two pairs of socks, which I found a favorable combination for hiking, though not exactly appropriate for snow.

  I stopped near the base of Nevada Fall, hid my backpack under some rocks, and scrambled up the gorge between Mount Broderick and Liberty Cap. I climbed each of them, having some little trouble with the snow. It would be a bit hairy returning the way I came, so I went around Liberty Cap and ran down the zigzag Nevada Falls trail, an early masterpiece of trail construction. As I approached my hidden backpack, I alarmed a bear who apparently had designs on my food. He was dispersed by yells and a few well-placed rocks.

  I started off again, complete with backpack, and when I reached Little Yosemite Valley I was feeling super-enthusiastic. I met two men coming down from Merced Lake and asked them to leave word at the LeConte Memorial for Uncle Frank that I would stay two days longer than expected. I had designs on Mount Clark.

  The snow was soft in the afternoon and the going was not easy. I arrived at camp rather late, fixed a supper, and went to bed. I was up at a very cold four-thirty A.M., had a good breakfast, fixed something for lunch, and suspended the remaining food from a high branch. I took my sleeping bag just in case I was forced to stay out overnight. I traveled up the canyon and soon realized the Mount Clark idea was quite impossible as it was a climb of another forty-five hundred feet.

  I continued on to Washburn Lake and up the canyon beyond. Some clouds covered the sun, which kept the air cool and the snow firm. I climbed up into Triple Peak Canyon, still feeling full of exuberance and anticipation. Why not Isberg Pass? I proceeded to climb; the snow was in good shape but it took longer than expected. The late afternoon view was wonderful. I realized I could not get back to camp that day, so why not stay the night on Isberg Pass? It was only ten thousand feet. I had nothing to eat, but the magnificence of the scene compensated for food.

  I dug a hole in the snow on the lee of a large rock ledge, crawled into my waterproof sleeping bag, and covered it with snow, still the best way to contend with subfreezing air. It was getting very cold; that night was the coldest I have ever experienced. A full moon illuminated the Ritter Range, and a vast view of the southern Sierra stretched southeast, while the Mount Clark Range and the Merced River basin glistened in the west under moonlit snow and ice.

  The sunrise was glorious, but I remained in my bag until there was sufficient heat for me to crawl out, coat, shoes, and all, to face nothing to eat and many miles to camp. I finished off a roll of film with shivering hands and started down the precipitous, snowy slopes. The snow was frozen hard and the going was precarious in my rubber-soled basketball shoes. By the time I got to the lip of the five-hundred-foot shelf above the Merced Canyon, the snow had softened and the going was tough in another way: I was breaking through the snow, sometimes to a depth of several feet, and the effort of clambering out and venturing through more snow was exhausting.

  I finally reached Washburn Lake at five that afternoon and Merced Lake one and one half hours later. I built a fire that, psychologically, at least, warmed my frozen body. A wind came up, which further accentuated the temperature. I took a pail to the river to get water for my projected cooking and as I stooped down to fill it I was struck in the abdomen with excruciating pain. I had never experienced anything like it. Doubled up, I nearly lost the pail to the swift water. I knew something was wrong as the pain persisted and then increased. I felt hot, in spite of my near-frozen condition. Without really knowing what I was doing, I managed to bring a full pail of water to the lean-to, climb into my bag, and drink a large quantity of water over the several hours to midnight. My fever broke and I slept fitfully while it rained and thundered for hours, not adding to my peace of mind. The next day I attempted to leave but was too weak and disorganized. I finished my remaining food and kept as warm as I could. The following morning I started out for Yosemite Valley, about thirteen miles away. I picked up strength and spirit and arrived at the LeConte Memorial at sundown with no symptoms, though weak and tired.

  It was not until May of 1929 that I found out what the illness at Merced Lake had been. I awoke one morning in Mabel Dodge Luhan’s guest house in Taos, and as I got out of bed I felt the same fierce abdominal pain. It was diagnosed as appendicitis, and I was rushed to Albuquerque where the famed surgeon Dr. Charles Lovelace promptly operated. Had I known what it was on the frozen night years before in the Sierra, I would probably have died of fright on the spot.

  How different my life would have been if it were not for these early hikes in the Sierra—if I had not experienced that memorable first trip to Yosemite—if I had not been raised by the ocean—if, if, if! Everything I have done or felt has been in some way influenced by the impact of the Natural Scene.

  It is easy to recount that I camped many times at Merced Lake, but it is difficult to explain the magic: to lie in a small recess of the granite matrix of the Sierra and watch the progress of dusk to night, the incredible brilliance of the stars, the waning of the glittering sky into dawn, and the following sunrise on the peaks and domes around me. And always that cool dawn wind that I believe to be the prime benediction of the Sierra. These qualities to which I still deeply respond were distilled into my pictures over the decades. I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

  6.

  Monolith

  THE SNAPSHOTS THAT I MADE ON MY EARLY YOSEMITE excursions were studied at other times of the year with unflagging interest. My purpose, during those first years of photography, was to make a visual diary of my mountain trips. “That one is of Mount Clark. Here is Uncle Frank fishing near Merced Lake. This shows my campsite near Echo Creek.”

  The snapshot is not as simple a statement as some may believe. It represents something that each of us has seen—more as human beings than photographers—and wants to keep as a memento, a special thing encountered. The little icons that return from the photo-finisher provide recollections of events, people, and places; they stir memories and create fantasies. Through the billions of snapshots made each year a visual history of our times is recorded in enormous detail.

  As I made more and more snapshots, I became interested in the photographic process and decided to learn how to make my own prints. Frank Dittman, a San Francisco neighbor, operated a photo-finishing business in the basement of his house. I forget who introduced us, saying, “You can learn a lot of nuts and bolts from Frank.” Mr. Dittman offered me a job as a “darkroom monkey,” and I began part-time work in 1917 and continued through the
next year. I received two dollars a day and my first darkroom instruction, uninspiring as it was.

  I arose early so that I could leave Dittman’s place a little after seven A.M., fully loaded with yesterday’s photographs and statements, delivering them by streetcar to a number of drugstores while collecting the work to be processed. Usually back at the shop around ten-thirty, I either developed the new rolls of film or made prints from the preceding day’s collections. I learned his photographic routines quickly.

  As the films of the era were orthochromatic (only sensitive to blue and green light), I opened them in red light and marked the end of each roll with the job number, using a grease pencil. The films were hung from a wooden rod and weighted by clamps placed at the base of each film. Six rods at a time, with a total of thirty-six rolls of film, were grasped and lowered into the deep, twenty-five-gallon developer tank. A clock timer was set for five to seven minutes (the longer time if the developer was cold), and the rods moved up and down every half-minute in the tank for agitation. They were then lifted out of the developer and into the short-stop tank, jiggled a bit, and then placed in the fixing bath tank and further jiggled every minute or so. Each full batch of film was washed for about twenty minutes. When the developer solution dropped two inches it would be “freshened” with replenisher. One tank would last for several months, changed only when the solution looked like a thick broth.

  After washing, each rod was hung on brackets and the film wiped with a small rubber squeegee. They were then moved to an electrically heated drying cabinet where they dried in less than half an hour. After noting the roll numbers, we then cut the films into separate frames and assembled them in their original envelopes.

  To make the prints, I exposed the negatives with a rudimentary contact printing machine while another employee developed them. Print exposure time was experience-based guesswork, as was the selection of the contrast grade of paper. The negatives varied in density and contrast to a discouraging degree, but fortunately, the paper had a lot of exposure latitude. After only a week on the job, my judgment improved enough to make a large number of successful prints on the first try. But all too often the person developing the prints would howl, “Do number twelve over again!”

  The prints were developed in a very dilute developer with a long developing time, allowing processing of thirty or more small prints at a time. A bunch of prints were dropped into the developer, separated swiftly, and poked around at random. After about three minutes they would be gathered and dumped into a fairly strong acid stop bath, separated, moved around a minute, and then put into a large tray holding the fixing bath. In three minutes they were placed in a drum washer; when all two hundred to three hundred prints of a set were in the drum, the water would be turned on and the prints spun around, some sticking together, some sticking to the inside surface of the drum, and some getting cornered and folded in the turmoil.

  Thirty minutes later the prints were removed to a drain board and then put through a ferrotyping solution, drained again, and fed to a heated drum dryer. The prints were placed face up on the canvas apron; there were eight prints to a row and we were hard pressed to complete laying out a row before it crept out of sight against the drum. With the proper amount of heat and speed, the prints dried upon completing one rotation and dropped off into a basket. Occasionally a print stuck to the drum; pulling it off would ruin it, so it was allowed to pass through again. If it remained stuck, it would cause a lot of trouble.

  About once a season Dittman took off the dryer’s cloth apron and had it laundered. I shudder now to think of the chemical contamination transferred from the inadequately washed prints to the apron. We did not realize at the time how important fresh solutions, proper processing times, and thorough washing were to image-permanence. These, my first lessons in darkroom technique, were decidedly archaic, not archival.

  At this point I was not a professional or creative photographer, but an ardent hobbyist, if that term can be applied to a curious youth who wanted to try everything within reach. Though I was still deeply immersed in music, during the decade of the twenties, photography and hiking were my beloved diversions. From my music studies, I applied the axiom of “practice makes perfect” to my photography. Mastering the craft of photography came through years of continued work, as did the ability to make images of personal expression. Step by inevitable step, the intuitive process slowly became part of my picture making.

  I remember seeing, in about 1919, an exciting vista from Baker Beach: a mass of dark cliffs gathering above the shore with a small segment of the ocean horizon beyond. The cliffs were clearly segmented into strong planar areas of light. I had no camera but my eye, and no reference to time but the slow passage of the sun. The scene has remained brilliantly fixed in my mind. I often returned with my camera in a futile search for that elusive experience with hopes for a moment that would justify a photograph. It has taken me a lifetime to recognize when I should not feel obligated to make a photograph. If I do not “see” an image in terms of the subject and its creative potential at the time, I no longer contest my instincts. I am certain that another photographer’s eye might perceive wonders in the scenes that evaded me.

  In these early years there were glimmers in my mind, such as that experience at Baker Beach, of what a photograph could be. On June 8, 1920, I wrote my father from Yosemite about a photograph I had made of a little cascade in Tenaya Canyon. I had begun the study of aesthetics and applied what little I knew of the formal rules of art: design, symmetry, form, texture, tonality.

  … I am more than ever convinced that the only possible way to interpret the scenes hereabout is through an impressionistic vision. A cold material representation gives one no conception whatever of the great size and distances of these mountains. Even in portraying the character and spirit of a little cascade one must rely solely upon line and tone. I have taken such a photograph… and am enclosing it in this letter.

  It is a delicate subject to use and I want to explain the print and my object in taking it thus.… I had the idea all framed several days before undertaking the picture. The idea is as follows; in some way to interpret the power of falling water, the light and airy manner of the spray particles and the glimmer of sunlit water. Very easy to think about but not so simple to do. The representation of detail and texture here gives the impression of fineness and lightness. As to the portrayal of sunlight on water I have managed that by the lighting—a deep somber background upon which the extreme opposite tone of the water is exaggerated so as to appear almost luminous. Can you see now what I mean when I say the tone and texture of a print has much to do with character and condition? Also the placement of the principal parts are such that the eye cannot follow them without slight Effort, adding more to the dynamical portrayal of the scene.… The reason for this lengthy explanation is that I want you to see what I am trying to do in pictorial photography—suggestive and impressionistic you may call it,—either,—it is the representation of material things in the abstract or purely imaginative way. I feel quite happy over this picture, to my mind it is the most satisfactory composition I have yet done. Hope you like it.…

  I can recall achieving another layer of meaning in only a few of the photographs taken before 1927. In 1923 I was on a long pack trip with my friend Harold Saville in the regions south of Mount Lyell, carrying a 6½×8½-inch Korona view camera, six double plate holders, and six boxes of Wratten Panchromatic glass plates. I had only one lens, and since it was fairly wide-field, my landscape pictures were quite inclusive. I made many drab shots and suffered some embarrassing failures.

  There was one exceptional photograph of Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake with a glowing evening cloud. I can recall the excitement of the scene, though at the time I had no precise idea of the image I was to make. It seemed that everything fell into place in the most agreeable way: rock, cloud, mountain, and exposure. I am sure things were going on in my mind: associations, memories, relative structuring of experiences
and ideas, and the flowering of intuition. This picture still has a certain unity and magic that very few others suggested in those early years.

  One bright spring Yosemite day in 1927 I made a photograph that was to change my understanding of the medium. My soon-to-be wife, Virginia, our friends Cedric Wright, Arnold Williams, and Charlie Michael, and I started out quite early that morning on a hike to the Diving Board. A magnificent slab of granite on the west shoulder of Half Dome, the Diving Board overlooks Mirror Lake thousands of feet below. Several years before I had climbed to the Diving Board with Francis Holman, and since then I had thought of that staggering view of Half Dome and knew it would make a good photograph.

  We decided to climb via the LeConte Gully, just north of Grizzly Peak. This route would be relatively free from snow though it is very steep and rough, and much easier to ascend than to descend, as I had discovered with Bill Zorach in 1920. My camera pack alone weighed some forty pounds, as I was carrying my Korona view camera, several lenses, two filters, six holders containing twelve glass plates, and a heavy wooden tripod.

  At the top of the gully, we removed our packs for the difficult final climb of several hundred feet to the summit of Grizzly Peak. This craggy rock tower gave us a rather startling panorama: four waterfalls, the great mass of Glacier Point, Half Dome rising thousands of feet higher, and the many peaks of the Sierra, dominated by Mount Florence and Mount Clark. Everything above seven thousand feet was covered with snow. I regretted leaving my camera below the summit.

  We returned to the intermediate base, took up our packs and proceeded up the long, partially snowy rise of Half Dome’s shoulder. I stopped often to set up and compose pictures. I had several failures, but did get one rather handsome telephoto image of Mount Galen Clark. By the time I had finished that picture, which took two exposures, added to the six errors I had already made, I had only four plates left for my prime objective of the trip.