by Ansel Adams
In 1980, my former assistant Andrea Gray took the initiative and coordinated an hour-long film on my life, Ansel Adams: Photographer. With the backing of San Francisco’s public television station KQED and sponsors such as the Shaklee Corporation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the success of the project was assured. Andrea co-produced the movie with the very fine director John Huszar of FilmAmerica. We began filming in my darkroom and home in Carmel, and then traveled to my birthplace in San Francisco, to Yosemite Valley, and to New Mexico, where two sequences were scheduled—one with Beaumont Newhall and the other with O’Keeffe.
With ample prior notice, we arrived at O’Keeffe’s house in Abiquiu. She gave close attention and all the time we required to film our episode. O’Keeffe and I decided to recollect our earlier days while walking around the interior court of her adobe home. We strolled about while talking informally, sat on a bench for more close-up conversations, passed through a hallway leading to the north garden, and walked together over the hilly grounds near the house. Several takes were made of each situation, and for each we had a flow of spontaneous talk. We were all astounded at her acuteness and strength at ninety-four. The movie turned out exceedingly well, and O’Keeffe much enjoyed the participation.
It is a moving experience simply to witness O’Keeffe’s excitement with life. Her incisive rejoinders in conversation are never forgotten. One recent morning at breakfast in our Carmel home she spoke of the problem of being taken for other people wherever she is. I asked, wickedly, “Have you ever been taken for Grandma Moses?” With a deep “ARRRRRAGH!” she arose and encircled my throat with surprisingly strong fingers, clearly indicating she was not at all pleased with the idea.
In January 1982, she telephoned from New Mexico to compliment me on my eightieth birthday. I thanked her and said, “But you are a month early; it’s not until February. I have still one more month of youth!”
She replied, “That makes no difference at your age. But remember, I shall always upstage you by fifteen years!” Her genius will always be in flower, no matter what age or events come upon her.
In the presence of O’Keeffe paintings, I cannot claim to fully understand them; I accept their power and dignity and the assurance that there is a tremendous reserve of beauty that fine artists, in all media, can give us. They may deny it vociferously, but artists burn with a need to convey by implication their personal conception of life and potential beauty, transcending all the laws, dogmas, practical aspirations, and the instincts of self-preservation. They, along with the scientists, poets, and philosophers, illuminate the world rather than exploit it. Anyone who has viewed a Stieglitz, a Moore, a Strand, or an O’Keeffe must be excited by such vision and execution; their messages stand as beacons.
I believe that the artist and his art are only a part of the total human experience; the viewer in the world at large is the essential other part. I feel that a true work of art is like nothing else in the world. It is not essential to know how the artist thinks or how he believes he relates to his profession or his society. What he creates is his message. For me a work of art does not cry for comprehension, only for reaction at the level of art itself.
Stieglitz taught me what became my first commandment: “Art is the affirmation of life.”
11.
The Sierra
Eastward, beyond the surf of the Pacific, beyond the tawny rolling Coast Range and the wide central valley of California, rises the great wall of the Sierra Nevada. Four hundred miles long, seventy-five miles wide, ten to more than fourteen thousand feet in height, it ranks with the major mountain ranges of the world. Certainly it is one of the most beautiful. Geologically, it is a tilted block of the earth’s crust—a long, continuous slope fronting the west, and a short, breath-taking decline to the eastern deserts.
Truly the “Range of Light,” as John Muir defined it, the Sierra Nevada rises to the sun as a vast shining world of stone and snow and foaming waters, mellowed by the forests growing upon it and the clouds and storms that flow over it.
THIS IS HOW I DESCRIBED THE SIERRA IN 1938 IN THE foreword to my book Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. When I was young I could not imagine that the resources of the earth were anything but inexhaustible. When it was built in 1903, our family home was surrounded by sand dunes; they soon disappeared completely under housing developments. From our house I looked toward the pristine Marin hills that seemed eternal; suddenly in 1934, there was the Golden Gate Bridge with its steady stream of automobiles into and out of the city. My placid environment was forever changed. Was this to be the inevitable reality for twentieth-century man? Perhaps the introduction to astronomy by my father did much to open the awareness of universal beauty and order for me, for even as a child I felt certain that the world around me was something more than an arena for exploitation or mere enjoyment.
The Sierra built and modulated my environmental concepts. It joined the wondrous visions of astronomical reality with the dynamics of nature all about me. And I did meet with people in the mountains who matched their power and dignity, not because they could conquer the peaks, but because they seemed to understand and become part of the mystery.
For the first three years that I visited Yosemite, the surrounding Sierra seemed inviolate. But in 1919, as I joined the Sierra Club and began work as the custodian of the LeConte Memorial, the Sierra took on a new meaning, and I looked more sensitively on the fragile qualities of the land around me.
Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club was actually a club—a group of University of California faculty and students and other San Francisco Bay Area lovers of the outdoors. John Muir, a great American environmentalist well before we had defined the meaning of that term, was the first president. He was the pathfinder as the club led the fight for the protection and preservation of American wilderness.
The purpose of the early Sierra Club was:
To explore, enjoy and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and the government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada.
At the time, the members of the club considered themselves a mountaineering elite, for there were few people, other than hunters, prospectors, timber and sheep men, who ventured into the mountain vastness. Under Muir’s brilliant leadership the club grew in size and clout until its influence was felt in the highest reaches of government and we all benefited: the establishment of the National Park Service and the creation of new national parks and monuments, including Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Glacier National Parks. There were also the grave losses, such as Hetch Hetchy: a valley of beauty nearly equal to Yosemite’s, drowned to become a vast reservoir.
My involvement with the Sierra Club revolved about my summer job as custodian, until 1927, when Cedric, Virginia, and I took part in that year’s Sierra Club outing to Sequoia National Park. The outing had been begun by Muir and William Colby in 1901. I wrote enthusiastically to Albert Bender:
July 25, 1927
Sierra Club Camp, Junction Meadow, Kern River Canyon
Dear Albert,
I wish I could set out to tell you of this marvelous summer—but I shall have to let my pictures do that. If nothing unfavorable happens to the plates—and I hope nothing does—I will have to show you the best set of mountain pictures I have ever had. But the pressure of my work has allowed me little time for rest and writing. Up at four or five in the morning—rushed breakfast—then off on the trail with 30 pounds on my back and a tripod in my hand—and by the time I return I feel like doing just nothing until the next morning.
Yesterday I climbed Milestone Mountain—13,600 feet and hauled my camera to the craggy top. The peak is about the most majestic I have ever seen—and the view incomprehensible. We have been favored with wonderful rolling clouds that have blanketed the entire Sierra.
I have been reading a good deal of Jeffers whenever I have the chance, and he
grows on me constantly. The power and vitality of his verse blends so perfectly with the rugged mountains. I think he is great.
I will be home somewhere around the tenth of August—and wish I could tell you how glad I will be to see you again. I have missed you a very great deal. As I said, I regretted leaving the city for the first time on account of the new lease on life your interest and friendship have given me. I shall return with unbounded enthusiasm for work.
Cedric Wright sends his best wishes.
Virginia Best” her””
and I send my”” and lots of affection besides—just oodles of it.
Remember me to all my friends and take care of yourself. Don’t eat from cans. That’s what I have been doing for four weeks.
Yours always
Ansel
(p.s.) Sold a portfolio to the President of the Sierra Club.
On returning to San Francisco in the fall, I began visiting the club’s offices and became active in its efforts and objectives. William Colby telephoned me one day in early 1928 and advised me that the next summer’s twenty-ninth annual outing would be in the Canadian Rockies. He asked me to come this time as their official photographer: all expenses paid but at no fee as the budget was very tight. There was only one possible reply to that invitation!
A friendly and excited group left by special train for Canada. I carried with me both my 6½×8½-inch and 4×5-inch Korona View cameras and lots of film. The Canadian Rockies are another world: spectacular and difficult. The rock is metamorphic, not as firm and bright as the granites of the Sierra. Timberline is lower, and the forests are sparse, though wild and green. It is gorgeous country, with unpredictable weather: a glorious sunset can resolve into a sudden rainstorm, changing into sleet by the early morning hours. The abundant mosquitoes were beautiful, large, and had padded feet; they could alight so gently you could not feel them land, and their excavation of epidermis began without delay! As in the Sierra I would unload exposed film and load fresh film with my film holders in a changing bag at dusk, while a friend kept the mosquitoes at bay.
Daylight lingered long and dawn came in the small hours. On a climbing day our Swiss guides would call us at two-thirty A.M., breakfast at three, and we were on the trail shortly thereafter. I remember on several occasions wading a stream in the gray dawn and finding the same stream waist-high in the late afternoon, flowing from the sun-warmed ice fields above and milky with glacier scoured rock particles.
We camped near the south base of Mount Robson, where we spent a day of revival and contemplation of the remarkable mountain rising about ten thousand feet above us. Robson is one of those big mountains that does not seem less distant as one plods toward it. We then moved around the west shoulder of the Robson Massif, past Robson Fall, and camped by beautiful Amethyst Lake, close to the several glaciers tumbling down from the summits of the Robson group.
The most spectacular day of the trip involved the ascent of Mount Resplendent. The guides took several large parties to its summit. The glacier we traversed was shattered with crevices, and the guides were in a frenzy to keep us in safe areas. The main groups were tied together with ropes, but I was on the loose with my camera. I had the tripod set up and ready to make a picture of Robson when I noticed some dirt on the lens. I took off the lens board and carefully cleaned the lens surfaces, then held it up to the sun to see if it needed any internal cleaning. To my dismay I noted several pinholes in the lens board. This implied that all the pictures taken with it to date were fogged. As it turned out, most of them showed multiple faint pinhole images and, of course, were ruined. Fortunately I had some opaque black tape with me and all the negatives made after this repair were undamaged.
Seldom did I take specifically assigned pictures while serving as Official Photographer—even then, the greater part of my work was entirely self-motivated. I reveled in the limitless image resources of the world around me. To commemorate the outing, I made a portfolio of photographs that I sold at cost, thirty dollars, to other members of the trip. Its success was such that I also made Sierra Club outing portfolios for the 1929, 1930, and 1932 High Sierra trips. Few of these photographs were of vast landscapes, most were details, minutiae of nature, and the moods of light and weather on a single mountain or valley. The portfolios were not intended to be great creative efforts, but fine mementos.
The Canadian trip established me as a leader of the Sierra Club outings, and in 1930 I assumed the duties of Assistant Manager; I selected the next day’s campsite, the route and the possible climbs on the way, arranged for the evening entertainment around the campfire, and cared for the lost and found. Each travel day I would arrive at our destination usually before the first packtrain, designate the men’s camp, the women’s camp, and the married camp. Location of the commissary and that of the two latrines was fairly easy. I would then vanish into the wilderness with my camera. Dinner was usually served at the most magical time of day for photography, and I often returned to camp too late for anything but a few desolate snacks and cold tea.
I wrote an enthusiastic description of the 1931 outing in an article for the Sierra Club Bulletin of February 1932.
Mid-afternoon… a brisk wind breathed silver on the willows bordering the Tuolumne and hustled some scattered clouds beyond Kuna Crest. It was the first day of the outing—you were a little tired and dusty, but quite excited in spite of yourself. You were already aware that contact with fundamental earthy things gave a startling perspective on the high-spun unrealities of modern life. No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied—it speaks in silence to the very core of your being. There are some that care not to listen but the disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges. You felt all this the very first day, for you were within the portals of the temple. You were conscious of the jubilant lift of the Cathedral range, of the great choral curves of ruddy Dana, of the processional summits of Kuna Crest. You were aware of Sierra sky and stone, and of the emerald splendor of Sierra forests. Yet, at the beginning of your mountain experience, you were not impatient, for the spirit was gently all about you as some rare incense in a Gothic void. Furthermore, you were mindful of the urge of two hundred people toward fulfillment of identical experience—to enter the wilderness and seek, in the primal patterns of nature, a magical union with beauty. The secret of the strength and continuance of the Sierra Club is the unification of intricate personal differences as the foundation of composite intention and desire.
Upon the arrival of the packtrain of fifty or more mules, a quasi-military organization would be set in motion: two men would be directed to cut dead wood for the stoves; the kitchen group of four would set up the equipment and get clean water from a nearby lake or stream. Dan Tachet, the chef, would start the evening meal with the conscription of general help and a flood of French-accented instructions. The food was magnificent and varied; to feed nearly two hundred people in the wilds properly for a month was no mean achievement. As I described it in the February 1932 Sierra Club Bulletin:
The first dinner in camp is a great occasion, especially for the initiates, who receive illustrated instruction in the ethics of our primitive cafeteria. It is then you get your spoon, a sort of visa to all subsequent meals. If you lose it, you are in for diplomatic difficulties of no mean degree. The spoon is the insignia of the order; without it you are disenfranchised and helpless. It usually reposes between the sock and boot-top, but some are drilled and hang on the bearers’ bosoms like medals. Literally, you are born into the Sierra Club with a steel spoon in your mouth.
At dusk we gathered at the rim of the world and watched the last fires of sun-flare on the summits, and the valleys fill with cool rivers of night. Stone and hoary trees and the bodies of our companions merged in translucent unity with the world of mountain and sky; our fire leaped and writhed into the night, and clouds of querulous sparks soared high among the stars. A spirit of unearthly beauty moved i
n the darkness and spoke in terms of song and the frail music of violins. You were aware of the almost mystic peace that came over us all; the faces of those about us reflected the experience of calm revelation. There was the face of the great scientist dreaming of a beauty beyond all formula—the face of the artist gazing with unseeing eyes into the abyss of stone, yet seeing an infinitude of things—the face of the man of affairs, quiet and eager, confronted with new and exquisite experience—the face of adolescence, hushed and surprised at this promise of the world’s sharp beauty. At the close of the music we went quietly through the darkness to our beds, swaying and twinkling our lights among the trees and listening to the choir of golden bells from our animals at pasture.
Arranging entertainment about the campfire each evening was not difficult. Often Cedric and his best violin pupil, Dorothy Minty, would perform such charmers as Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. Sometimes a good singer or lecturer would be extracted from the group. Over a number of rainy days in camp during the 1932 outing, I prepared a series of pseudo-Greek tragedies, Exhaustos, The Trudgin’ Women, and The Oxides. (I never finished a fourth, titled The Mules by Oresturphannies.) The group entered into rehearsals and performances with great gusto. The cast of characters included such exalted roles as King Dehydros of Exhaustos; Commissaros, Prince of Indigestion; Clymenextra, daughter of King Dehydros, Rhykrispos of Poucha; Ogotellone, a fisherman; and the Chorus of Weary Men and Sunburnt Women. I was the Spirit of the Itinerary with a harp of bent wood and fishing line, greeting the assembled with such unforgettable lines as:
Hellenic splendor meets Sierra dusts
And javelins confront mosquito thrusts.