Ansel Adams

by Ansel Adams

  The next morning at breakfast I said to Mary, “That was quite a party! I guess I lost my reputation last night.”

  She replied, “You certainly did, but you lost it so quickly nobody missed it!”

  Hal marked the occasion in poetry:

  To a Guest Named Ansel

  Wherever a bird lands he sings

  And brings

  A bit of heaven down or preens

  His wings like little evergreens

  Of upward earth, combing so

  The light that shines and things that grow

  And all the best of all the weathers

  Into a single ball of feathers.

  You, sir, are personal and long

  Far too large to make a song.

  Combining rightly like a bird

  Only the things good to be heard—

  And yet you touch a floor or a chair

  Or the indoors or the outdoors air

  With just the presence that can float

  Away upon a perfect note.

  Whether in New Mexico, Carmel, or San Francisco, Albert Bender opened many doors for me throughout the years of our friendship. Although I was aware of his advancing age, I guess I took for granted that he would always be with us. Virginia and I were shocked to receive an emotional telegram on March 4, 1941, from an old friend telling us that Albert had passed away after a short illness. We were living in Yosemite and I did not even know he had been ill. We immediately left for San Francisco and inquired what we could do to help. I was told Albert had requested an Irish wake to be attended by his friends and that I would take charge the final day from midnight till the morning funeral at Temple Emmanuel.

  I thought of all Albert had been to me as I parked my car on Post Street and walked through the entrance garden and on to his door. I arrived promptly at midnight and was briefed by a friend who turned over authority to me for the shift. Sandwiches, cookies, soft and hard drinks, and cheerful reminiscences softened an otherwise sorrowful occasion. Several people were there, some standing at the casket and others talking softly in the dining room. All during the small hours men and women, singly or in couples, would enter the apartment quietly, many obviously stricken with grief. Some talked about Albert and what kindnesses he had done for them; one elderly man whispered to me, “Albert helped put our son through college. We shall never forget him.” Practically all of these people were unknown to me. Most were relatively obscure: clerks, garage men, nurses, gardeners, mailmen, garbage collectors, janitors from his office building on California Street, and others who sought a last communion with their friend. These people of the night and dawn revealed to me the scope of Albert’s life. I looked for the last time upon him, seemingly comfortable in his casket and serene as if he were dreaming of his good works. His example of nobility and generosity bore fruit in many orchards of the human spirit.

  8.

  Virginia

  AS AN ENTHUSIASTIC YOUNG MUSICIAN, MY FIRST SUMMERS in Yosemite posed one dilemma: where to practice? Anyone attempting to become a concert pianist cannot take a three-month hiatus every summer. In 1921 I was introduced to Harry Best, the owner of Best’s Studio, who kindly allowed me to practice on his old Chickering square piano. I was first attracted to Mr. Best’s piano and soon thereafter to his seventeen-year-old daughter. Virginia Best was housekeeping for her father because her mother had passed away the year before. Virginia had a beautiful contralto voice and planned a career as a classical singer. We found considerable mutual interests in music, in Yosemite, and, it turned out, in each other.

  Later that summer on a hike with Uncle Frank, I wrote to her for the first time:

  Lake Merced, Yosemite National Park

  September 5th, 1921

  Dear Virginia,

  You cannot imagine what a really delightful time we are having up here in the wilderness. Excepting a rather severe thunderstorm, the weather has been perfect, and we have done nothing but “loaf” the last three days away.

  Tomorrow we start for the Lyell Fork Canyon (of the Merced) and will spend perhaps five days thereabouts. This lofty valley is one of the most remarkable regions of the park, and the grandeur of Rogers Peak, the ascent of which is our main objective, cannot be described.…

  If I only had a piano along! The absurdity of the idea does not prevent me from wishing, however. I certainly do miss the keyboard; as soon as I am back in Yosemite, I shall make a beeline for Best’s Studio, and bother your good father with uproarious scales and Debussian dissonances. I certainly appreciate the opportunity offered me this summer to keep up my practice, and I am very grateful to you all indeed. I shall go back to the city feeling that I have lost little in music during the summer. A month, I’ll wager, will find me completely caught up.

  Cordially,

  Ansel

  Best’s Studio, which Harry began in Yosemite in 1902, sold his paintings of Yosemite, wood carvings, and fine books, as well as a variety of more mundane souvenirs. Harry, his brother Arthur, and Arthur’s wife, Alice, were self-taught painters of western scenery. Their romantically stylized paintings seemed far away from the qualities I responded to in the Sierra landscape—the hard, yet subtle granite with clean edges and compelling structure, the sharp delineation of waterfalls and forests, and the clean and crisp air and horizons.

  The tradition of concessions in our National Parks had begun before the founding of the National Park Service in 1916. The parks had previously been supervised by the U.S. Army, and the new Park Service continued to allow concessionaires to operate their businesses (rooms, tents, meals, studios—such as Best’s—a general store, and the stables) for an annual operating fee. For the dullards who did not know what to do in Yosemite there were pool rooms, bowling alleys, and dance halls. The general level of taste in Yosemite Valley in the 1920s was about that of a bustling frontier mining town.

  Harry Best retained a photographer of small talent but huge energy, whose name has long been forgotten. He joined the photographers from the other studios who arrived for sunrise at Mirror Lake each summer day to photograph the tourists who flocked there to be photographed. There was great competition among the photographers for the ideal location for the cameras, and altercations were common.

  A stone walkway had been built out into the lake, and families would be induced to walk out, turn around, and stand facing the camera. In the still air of early morning, with Mount Watkins beyond, they would be recorded along with their mirrorlike reflection in the lake. Within an hour many pictures were made, deposits collected, and receipts given. The quiet beauty of the scene itself faded as the gathering morning wind broke up the “mirror” of Mirror Lake for the day. The tourists would come to the studios in the afternoon and see the proofs. Their final prints would be ready the next day. The logistics of this enterprise were frantic and complicated, and the quality of the work was definitely mediocre.

  I trusted the development of my own films to the workers in Yosemite’s darkrooms for only a very short time. The darkrooms were damp, stinking caves with stalactites of hypo hanging down from the bottom of the leaking sinks. The large tray for the fixing bath was a wooden box about 2×3×1 feet, lined with white oilcloth that was attached by numerous rusting carpet tacks. The fixer was mixed when the concessions opened in the spring and discarded in the fall when they closed. The prints fixed after June in this overtaxed bath would not last the year, and some of my friends suffered confirmation of this inevitable fact.

  Virginia shared with me a feeling of revulsion at the commercialization of Yosemite. From our first years of friendship, I felt a rightness about the two of us. We were comfortable together. My letters of the period express a calflike wonder and an introspective analysis at a simple, but deeply felt level.

  I wrote in Victorian mode to my father about my first love.

  Yosemite, July 7th, 1922

  Dear Pa,

  I am sure you will not mind—I know you will not—when I tell you I have met someone, whom I have grown v
ery fond of indeed. A very lovely character—one whose affection is a privilege to possess.… Pa, I have been hit very hard, and I make no pretense of denying it—for I am proud of it—but I do not want you to worry about it—I shall always be prudent and rest upon your advice.…

  The world seems fuller, more beautiful,—there is something in it now that was not there before, something I did not dream would come so soon. I am beginning to realize what real life is—life of the loftiest kind.

  Well, I have told you everything—you know who it is—I do not think you will worry about me. I shall not mar this letter with everyday facts and conventional phrases, so I will close what seems to me to be a very important communication. I will write you and Ma soon again. Keep well.

  My love to you and Ma—this is addressed to both of you.

  Ansel

  Virginia and I were serious for some six years before we were finally married in 1928. Engaged-disengaged-reengaged would be a more accurate description. A year after our first engagement, I realized how far I had to go with music before I would amount to anything, and I wrote her a letter of painful decision. Virginia took it wonderfully well, although I came to know later it was a most distressing event in her life. Between our engagements I considered the future with other young ladies. Once or twice I became quasi-serious, but fortunately, nothing came of these short-lived relationships.

  I arrived in Yosemite to celebrate the New Year of 1928 with Virginia, and after the years of procrastination I formally proposed and she accepted. On January 2, just three days later, we were married at Best’s Studio with my parents, her father, and a few friends in attendance. Virginia did not have time to buy a wedding dress and so wore her best dress, which happened to be black. With perhaps a trace of scorn for tradition, along with a coat and tie, I wore knickers and my trusty basketball shoes. Happily, Cedric Wright and another good friend, Ernst Bacon, were in Yosemite. Ernst played an Austrian wedding march on the Chickering. Before the ceremony my best man, Cedric, was putting chains on Harry Best’s Dodge loaned to us for the honeymoon. Not only was Cedric thoroughly soaked from the fast-falling snow, but he had lost the ring my parents had brought and had entrusted to his care. He found it in the slush under the car just in time and, though soaking wet, performed his duties as best man with aplomb.

  Virginia and I finally left Yosemite at six P.M. on our wedding day, with Cedric and Ernst joining us for the ride to Berkeley. Beyond Merced we had a flat tire. The jack would not fit under the car, and we had to uproot a nearby mailbox post to use as a lever. The tire was exchanged, the mailbox post set back in its hole, and we continued on to Berkeley, arriving at Cedric’s unheated home at midnight. Our bed was a roll-away, but we were so weary that it made no difference to us that night.

  In the early winter of 1932 Virginia became pregnant. I was in the throes of my first full years in photography and was gingerly balancing commercial with creative work, much of the latter in Yosemite and the Sierra. I was on the staff of the Sierra Club outing for 1933 that was to be a month-long excursion into the Kings River High Sierra. The baby was due in early August, and I expected to be back in Yosemite in good time for the arrival of another world citizen. During the trip I heard nothing from the outside world; the last letter brought in by packtrain gave no indication of impending events. Intuitively, I left the last outing camp a day early. It was an arduous hike over Bishop Pass, down to the Owens Valley, and then by car to Yosemite. I arrived in the late evening at Best’s Studio and rushed in to ask how things were with Virginia. Her father succinctly said, “They was.”

  I dashed to the local hospital to find mother and child doing exceedingly well. Michael had arrived two days before. A message had been sent but I did not receive it, since being in the High Sierra was literally being out of this world. Michael was a handsome baby and in perfect health, as was Virginia.

  When our daughter was born two years later, we were living in San Francisco, but I was back in Yosemite on an assignment. The indications of our baby’s debut were not pressing, and I arrived a day late. Virginia had known it was time, called a taxi to be taken to the hospital, and welcomed Anne a few minutes after arrival.

  I telegrammed:

  MARCH 9, 1935

  VIRGINIA ADAMS

  ANNE PUT ONE OVER ON ME AFTER ALL STOP I EXPECTED IT WOULD BE SIMPLE AS USUAL BUT I WAS WAITING FOR A WIRE OR CARD AND WAS ALL READY TO RUSH DOWN STOP EVERYONE SENDS LOVE AND CONGRATULATIONS STOP ARE YOU ALL RIGHT STOP SHALL I COME RIGHT DOWN OR SHALL I STAY HERE UNTIL MONDAY AND FINISH IMPORTANT WINTER PICTURES STOP WHATEVER YOU WANT ME TO DO I WILL GLADLY STOP LET ME KNOW HOW YOU ARE AT ANY EVENT STOP LOVE TO ALL AND AN ESPECIAL LOT FOR YOU AND ANNE

  ANSEL ADAMS

  Virginia was a wonderful mother. My parents were, of course, ecstatic over the children and would have welcomed a dozen of them; we considered two to be sufficient. More would have taxed our ability to give them the opportunities and constructive attention we felt important.

  Harry Best died suddenly in 1936 as he was saying good-night to our year-old baby, Anne. After his death, Virginia became the owner of Best’s Studio. When we opened the studio in the spring of 1937, the first thing we did was to stock it with quality books, photographic supplies, and the finest American Indian crafts we could find.

  I wrote to the National Park Service in 1938, outlining my concern about the sale of souvenirs in our National Parks.

  The individual derives experiences from the parks while he is in them; he also desires to take something tangible from them as a memento of his experiences. He buys a painting, a photograph, a book, or a curio. These curios are significant to him; it serves to remind him of his experience in the National Park in which he purchased it.…

  It seems that in an earlier day, authentic relics of Indian culture, real pieces of stone and petrified wood, samples of rocks, bark, foliage, were sought by an interested public. These things were real—they were an actual minute fraction of the environment. As time progressed, the supply of naturally occurring objects was reduced in relation to the demand and subsequent governmental restrictions—and the commercial souvenir appeared. Now here in Yosemite we have many forms of souvenirs that have no justification for sale in National Parks. Factories churn out pennants, pillow cases, purses, book markers, paper knives, paper weights, dolls, even hip flasks—all inscribed with the words “Yosemite National Park.”

  The shops selling such curios cannot be blamed for depreciating the public taste and exploiting the parks. Nothing else exists for them to sell and few of the dealers have the taste, knowledge, or capital necessary to enter a special manufacturing field.

  Virginia and I decided that for us to be able to keep Best’s Studio open we would have to produce some of the needed high-quality items ourselves, but the National Park Service balked and would not allow Best’s Studio to act also as a publisher. Along with three friends, we formed the small, separate firm of Five Associates, to publish fine color and black and white photographic postcards and notecards, as well as both serious picture books and guide books to Yosemite and the Sierra.

  I hit upon an idea that provided the Yosemite visitor with another type of souvenir. I selected a few of my Yosemite negatives that could be printed in large quantities as 8×10-inch photographs by an assistant, and sold for a nominal sum. My practice has been to sign only the photographs that I, myself, print, since the making of the print can be as important as the making of the negative. Though I do not print the Special Edition photographs, I did sign them during their first years, then initialed them for one year. But in 1974 I stopped, as I realized that signing or initialing would mislead people into thinking the Special Editions were my fine photographs. From their beginning, Special Edition Prints have been stamped and labeled as such, so they can be clearly differentiated from my fully original work. They have proved very popular and are still being made under my supervision and sold only in Yosemite.

  The success of these prints depends on their
consistently high print quality, and that hinges upon the assistant I choose to print them. Recently we have truly hit our stride and, though still carefully watched by my eagle eyes, the past couple of assistants have been ideal: first, during the early 1970s, Ted Orland and then Alan Ross. Alan was my photographic assistant from 1974 until 1979, and he continues to make the Special Edition Prints with sensitivity. He knows those negatives thoroughly and interprets them as closely as possible to my original fine prints of those images.

  When our children were young it occurred to Virginia and me to do a children’s book, titled Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley. It was published and distributed by Studio Publications of New York in 1941. We should have published it ourselves as we did with our later books. The reproductions were terrible and the editor ruined the simplicity of Virginia’s text by making it conventionally inane at every opportunity. Despite these problems, the book was a considerable success. To this day, parents of grown children bring the book to us, tattered and torn from much use, and request our signatures, saying their children were brought up on it.

  The Yosemite grammar school was excellent and a short walk from our home. Our children grew up in the idyllic environment of Yosemite, but when high school was considered we realized we had a problem. The Mariposa High School was less than ideal academically and involved a daily ninety miles of busing, a bit worrisome for us in poor weather. After much thought, we sent Mike to Wasatch Academy in Utah, a favorite high school for children of National Park Service employees.

  Anne was an appealing child, very intelligent, feminine, and beguiling. She attended the rather posh Hamlin School in San Francisco for a time. I well recall one rainy day when, dressed in my usual Levi’s, black darkroom apron, old hat, and formidably bushy beard, I escorted an embarrassed Anne to the school pickup car. Anne told me that later one of the other girls asked, “Is that your father?” Anne went on to Dominican High School in San Rafael, a most excellent institution, graduating with highest honors, and later attended Barnard College and Stanford University.