by Ansel Adams
That first afternoon in Yosemite, I drove everyone to Glacier Point, where I pointed out some of the areas we would visit. It was a cold day and the mountains looked very bleak and forbidding. In fact, I think the party was a bit discouraged by the barren aspect of the scene. We were looking up at higher terrain and could not see the more inviting valleys and forests hidden in the mass of rocky ridges and peaks.
The morning of departure found us on the Snow Creek Trail, climbing out of Yosemite Valley from the Tenaya Creek Canyon. The first stage, about three thousand feet of zigzag trail, brought us to Snow Creek Valley. As we ascended, the vistas of Half Dome and Clouds Rest increased in magnificence: five- and six-thousand-foot slopes and cliffs rising before us. They were impressed. Continuing, we turned eastward and crossed Mount Watkins Ridge, the trail leading on past Tenaya Lake and the ice-sculptured valley beyond, and to our first camp at Budd Creek in Tuolumne Meadows, eighty-five hundred feet elevation and decidedly chilly on our hour of arrival. It was a very long day, and I confess I rode a horse a good many of the miles.
The next morning we traveled to Cathedral Lake, where we camped for two nights and had a fine day scrambling among the delicate crags of the region. We did not get into any really perilous situations. I was a “fourth-classer” (rope, but without pitons), and fortunately I knew my limits, further restricted by the fact that we did not anticipate climbing and thus had no rope with us. Two of the party wanted to crawl out on Matthes Crest but I did not allow that; without a rope it presented what I considered a very real hazard. It takes a little experience, such as my close call with William Zorach years before, to realize what dangers may exist in seemingly simple and safe situations.
Our next stop was at Fletcher Lake, en route to the valley of the Lyell Fork of the Merced River, a tributary rising at the south base of Mount Lyell. Photographing was very much in order. I was disappointed that O’Keeffe did not bring any painting materials or make any sketches. Her work remained centered in her beloved New Mexico and this was a true vacation, a change in visual experience.
Camping at ten thousand feet near Tuolumne Pass was more than cold, but we all considered it a prime adventure. The next morning, with an early start, we crossed Vogelsang Pass into the Maclure Fork of the Merced and branched eastward on the Isberg Pass Trail, leading along the high bench between Mount Florence and the cliffs of the Merced Canyon above Washburn Lake. Above, to the south, the necklace of peaks of the Merced Range encircled the view. These mountains were quite different from what the other members of the group had experienced, and all responded to the clean, crisp air and the sense of remoteness and quietness. The silence of the Sierra in late fall is unforgettable; all streams are low, and insect hum is gone for the year. Only the wind makes its secretive sounds through the conifers.
I well remember a late October day in 1924 as Uncle Frank and I prodded a weary donkey down the Isberg Trail to Merced Lake and on home to Yosemite Valley. A storm was in the making, with gathering gray clouds and a rising wind that mourned in the forest while the air turned icy cold. A mood of calamity grew upon us. We did not have adequate clothing for the occasion and feared frostbite. We managed to survive by crawling into our sleeping bags as soon as we found a campsite near Merced Lake. This 1938 trip with McAlpin and company was almost tropical compared to that 1924 experience.
In midafternoon we reached the Lyell Fork of the Merced River and turned left for a mile of cross-country wilderness travel through lodgepole and hemlock pines to the meadows where we were to set up camp. We were ringed to the east and south with rugged peaks: the less severe slopes were to the north and, beyond the forest to the west, a valley opened yielding an expansive view of the encircling Merced Range.
Dave asked me to name the peaks we were seeing to the east; Rodgers Peak was hidden by a ridge, the summit of Elektra Peak and the north flank of Foerster Peak could be seen. A rock tower, actually the end of a metamorphic ridge, rose before the background summits. I casually remarked that the Sierra Club had named this little peak after me during a trip in 1934 when I introduced the annual High Sierra outing party to this area. I hastened to add that a natural feature cannot be named for a living person; their kind gesture was really a friendly nomination. O’Keeffe needled me for days on this admission. “Oh, now I see why you brought us here, just to show off your mountain!” I vigorously denied such intentions. She admitted that it was a nice little mountain and, “You should be proud of it.”
O’Keeffe loved campfires and would stand close to them in her voluminous black cape, her remarkable features and her dark hair gleaming in the flickering light. She never seemed bored or tired and enjoyed every moment of the trip. The tree and rock shapes entranced her, especially the bright smooth polish on the granite of the high elevations. She would often say, “I must come back here some day; I may find something to paint. I guess it’s too far, but maybe not!”
There were many unforgettable experiences during that trip: the glacial lakes in the upper valley, well above treeline, with the looming shapes of Rodgers Peak and the south cliffs of Mount Lyell, the ascent to Isberg Pass from where the grand view of the Ritter Range towered to the east and the southern Sierra stretched for two hundred miles under the bright, clear sky.
We reluctantly broke camp and descended to Washburn Lake which rests two thousand feet deep in a bowl of granite. The forests at this elevation of about seventy-five hundred feet were of lodgepole pine, fir, and aspen, lush in comparison with the stark growth of the higher altitudes. We then pressed on, down past Nevada and Vernal Falls to the civilization of Yosemite Valley with hot showers and well-prepared food. Virginia is a superb cook, and we quickly regained what weight the trip had cost us. Dave and the others stayed at the Ahwahnee and I was happy to be home in our own small but comfortable house behind Best’s Studio. After a day or so we drove to San Francisco and had a final fling at the Fairmont Hotel before the group returned to the East and I back to Yosemite.
As the friendship between Dave and me grew, so did his interest in photography; as his acquaintance with the Newhalls also blossomed, Dave became a committed soldier in the fight for the recognition of photography as a fine art.
Besides our years of work together at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Dave and Sally enjoyed a warm correspondence with Virginia and me and, whenever possible, we would get together. In 1972 I began receiving letters from Dave insisting that I make my photographs available for a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I had yet to have a major solo show in a New York City museum (Stieglitz’s An American Place had been a private gallery), and Dave was convinced that the time had come. He was a trustee of the Metropolitan, and I was soon invited to have a show of one hundred and fifty prints in the spring of 1974.
On January 16, 1972, Dave wrote:
Dear Ansel,
I’ve given a lot of thought to the 1974 show. Adams is universally known as a Pioneer Conservationist, an enthusiast for the National Parks and open space, so this phase does not need to be overemphasized. Adams, the Humanist, is not known and this should be emphasized:—the Nisei, the Indians, even including the cook and wranglers on our wonderful pack trip in 1937—as many pictures of people as possible, Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, etc. etc.
I had been frustrated for many years with the selection of my work for museum exhibitions. Curator after curator had chosen the same small group of landscapes, though I have thousands of other good negatives to draw from. I wanted this show to have a broader perspective, to show some of my many portraits and a sizable excerpt of my work with Polaroid Land materials, a project that I had followed for over twenty years.
For much of the next year, I printed the show and worked closely with the magnificent staff of the Met. Andrea Gray was the curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and her energies and imagination were indispensable. I was so impressed that when she left the museum I employed her as my assistant, a positio
n she held for the next six years. Andrea balances incredible efficiency with one of the bounciest personalities alive. She brought a new sense of organization to my archive as well as my life. After leaving Carmel, she established herself as an art adviser of note in New York City. Her clients are lucky people. Andrea also possesses a superior intellect. After years of research, she was able to locate many of the original prints and reconstruct fully my 1936 exhibition at An American Place. The Center for Creative Photography sponsored this exhibition and accompanying catalog.
The Met exhibition gave me a certain nervousness about how the photographs would be received by the urban, sophisticated audience. Their world often seemed so cold and remote from my western roots, and I was very conscious of the potential resistance by urbanites to the other great world of nature.
On April 7, 1973, I wrote to Dave and Sally:
Nothing could be worse than a funny situation which is misunderstood, so I shall describe again my nightmare; I have a recurrent dream that is hair-raising. It is simply this: I am in some town and am picked up by a cab; signboards and posters say that Ansel Adams will play some concerto with a great orchestra tonight; I don’t know the concerto and could not strike the first note. In any event, I am taken to the auditorium backstage; I meet the conductor and the orchestra members. The orchestra goes out on stage (the house is packed!). Then the conductor gestures me to proceed on stage, with him following me. The audience gives a great ovation as I move to the piano. I am seated at the piano, awaiting the start of the introductory notes. I am PETRIFIED; I do not know the concerto at all, not even the first notes. At that moment I usually awake with loud noises and gasps. It takes quite a little time to get this awful situation out of mind.
What was funny with the dream a few nights ago was this: the concert was sponsored by Dave and Sally McAlpin and your names were larger than Beethoven’s on the posters. You both were backstage with the conductor and were beaming with cordial anticipation when I arrived. I was touched and scared to death. I never got to the piano in this dream, just part way on stage. I woke up with a mingled sense of terror and chagrin at having let you down.
In the midst of preparations for the exhibition the Met experienced large budgetary cutbacks. Dave provided the necessary funds so that the show could go on, including new electrical wiring in one gallery that previously was so dimly lit that Zone III did not appear much different from Zone VI.
Since I had a number of books of photographs in print or soon to be published, Dave and I agreed that the catalog would be exclusively Polaroid photographs. The catalog grew into a book, Singular Images, with an introduction by Dr. Edwin Land and a closing essay by Dave, “Photographic Experiences with Ansel Adams.” I was very happy with the entire exhibition and the very handsome catalog in the form of a small fine book.
I was honored to be asked to give two lectures at the Met during the opening week of the show. A few nights before the second lecture I was asked to speak to a group of students who called themselves “The Concerned Photographers.” The talk was held just down the street from the Met at the International Center of Photography. I arrived and found myself among a hostile group, but I was fully armed with heavy rejoinders. The students didn’t want to listen because they felt, as many others felt over the years, that my photography was not relevant in today’s world. I began my talk by stating that I was concerned about photography as well as about the human condition. The response to that remark was not favorable!
It is interesting how my photographs have been in and out of vogue over the years. Both Edward Weston and I were accused of being irresponsible during the late 1930s as threats of world war grew, because we made photographs of aesthetic content and were not documenting the world’s social condition. We were concerned with the world we knew and its future and were not belaboring the obvious. In the 1960s and ’70s, our country was again troubled by grave problems—Vietnam, racism, Nixon, drugs, and so forth—but creative interpretation of the world and humanity had greater acceptance, and expressive photography could be practiced and experienced without serious attack.
Both lectures at the Met were warmly received. Following one lecture, during the question and answer period, a man rose and asked, “In the progress of your work have you ever been aware of achieving a new state of consciousness?” That provoked a moment of thought and I replied, “I practice Zone not Zen.” My rejoinder was successful as humor, but the question required a considerably more involved answer. I believe the artist does enhance his state of consciousness as he progresses in his work. He achieves not so much a new state of awareness as he does a continuously expanding awareness of the world about him and of himself and his perceptive vision.
In a catalog for my exhibition “The Unknown Ansel Adams” at The Friends of Photography in 1982 I attempted to define my personal photographic credo.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed, and is, thereby, a true manifestation of what one feels about life in its entirety. This visual expression of feeling should be set forth in terms of a simple devotion to the medium. It should be a statement of the greatest clarity and perfection possible under the conditions of its creation and production.
My approach to photography is based on my belief in the vigor and values of the world of nature, in aspects of grandeur and minutiae all about us. I believe in people, in the simpler aspects of human life, in the relation of man to nature. I believe man must be free, both in spirit and society, that he must build strength into himself, affirming the enormous beauty of the world and acquiring the confidence to see and to express his vision. And I believe in photography as one means of expressing this affirmation and of achieving an ultimate happiness and faith.
16.
Edward Weston
ALBERT BENDER ATTRACTED ALMOST EVERYONE OF CULTURAL consequence at one time or another to his frequent soirees. On an afternoon in 1928 he called me, as he so often did, saying, “Come for supper. There is a good photographer in town and you should meet him.” I arrived at Albert’s and was introduced to a slight of figure, thoughtful, and reserved Edward Weston, surrounded by his four young sons: Chandler, Brett, Neil, and Cole.
Weston had made his living as a respected photographic portraitist in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale. Acting on the overpowering conviction that a major change was necessary for his creative life, in 1923 he left a nest of growing reputation and income for several years in Mexico—a voyage to unimagined lands of creative, inner-directed achievement in his chosen medium. At the same time he permanently separated from his wife and the mother of his sons, Flora Chandler Weston.
At our first meeting Edward’s attention was quietly focused on his sons. They were becoming reacquainted after his amorous and adventurous Mexican sojourn. Edward’s second son, seventeen-year-old Brett, had already made some remarkable photographs; most of them showed an unavoidable parental derivation that, in time, he overcame with his own powerful concepts and graphic qualities.
I am sure Edward was as poor as a churchmouse at that time. All five of the Westons wore old, though very clean clothes. Edward was impressed by Bender and his warmth, ebullience, and intelligence. Albert became one of his earliest patrons, purchasing, and urging his friends to acquire, Weston’s photographs when few evidenced interest in the fine print aspect of the art.
After dinner, Albert asked Edward to show his prints. They were the first work of such serious quality I had ever seen, but surprisingly I did not immediately understand or even like them; I thought them hard and mannered. Edward never gave the impression that he expected anyone to like his work. His prints were what they were. He gave no explanations; in creating them his obligation to the viewer was completed.
Later that evening, Albert showed Edward some of my prints from his collection. Edward made no comment. Albert insisted I play the piano; my playing at that time was quite acceptable and was far more accomplished than
my photographs. To this day Brett will say, “We heard you play at Albert’s; we liked your music but did not think much of your photographs.” I fully agree with this comment; ten years later the opposite was true.
In 1931 I began writing a column on creative photography for The Fortnightly, an independent, San Francisco–based journal for the arts, now long defunct. My debut review was of Edward’s first one-man show in 1931 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In the intervening three years I had become very responsive to his work—you could say that I grew into it.
Weston is a genius in his perception of simple, essential form.… In the main, his rocks are supremely successful, his vegetables less so, and the cross-sections of the latter I find least interesting of all. But I return with ever-growing delight to his rocks and tree details, and to his superb conceptions of simple household utensils.… I feel that photography will find itself in the not too distant future reverting to the simplicity of style that distinguishes the historic work of Atget. I also feel that Weston’s work is tending in that direction… there is an essential relation (not necessarily physical) in the form and structure of all natural objects. The very complexity of the natural world obviously implies coincidence of form and function through our imagination. In certain aspects a pepper may easily suggest the curved lines of a human torso, even though the presentation of a pepper in this aspect was not intended by the artist.
It is a pleasure to observe in Weston’s work the lack of affectation in his use of simple, almost frugal, materials. His attachment to objects of nature rather than to the sophisticated subjects of modern life is in accord with his frankness and simplicity. The progress of Weston’s work to date is rapid and significant, and his development in the future promises to be an important strengthening element in the complete establishment of photography as a fine art.