Ansel Adams

by Ansel Adams

  Edward’s work remains an example of achievement, of purpose, and as a standard of expressive quality in photography.

  17.

  Documentary Photography

  THOUGH A PACIFIST AT HEART, I BECAME OUTRAGED over the deeds of the hideous Hitler regime and attempted to enlist to participate in its demise. While I was turned down because I was a married forty-year-old with dependents, I volunteered for any war-related job I could find. My civilian assignments included escorting American troops around Yosemite Valley. Often hundreds at a time visited as companies of heavy artillery made long practice treks to Yosemite, towing columns of large field cannons. I felt this contribution to the war effort was inconsequential, and I was restless to be of greater help.

  The colonel in charge of the 1604th Company at Fort Ord brought his men several times. He invited me to come to the base and teach some of his men practical photography; because his group was an artillery repair and maintenance outfit and because he claimed he could not get satisfactory pictures from the Signal Corps, he wanted his own men to provide them.

  Several times I was driven from Yosemite in his command car. These trips were also practice assignments for the colonel’s drivers; they would be expected to find the shortest ways to and from Yosemite and to compete for the fastest time. They seemed to use only two speeds: stop and race. Twice on hot days the car’s motor burned out. These trips were planned on maps, not in reality; I traveled over more unsurfaced back roads in the San Joaquin Valley than I thought existed.

  This job led to one at the San Francisco Presidio, printing some top-secret negatives of Japanese military installations in the Aleutians. During this session, I slept at home but was under constant armed guard.

  One day in the late summer of 1943, an old Sierra Club friend, Ralph Merritt, visited me in Yosemite. I discussed with him my frustration in not being able to find appropriate use of my energies during these war years. He suggested that the best I could do was to take advantage of my situation and continue photographing the natural scene, saying, “I feel that when the war is over, these will be useful to our country.”

  When I replied that I felt the present human obligations to be of supreme importance, he rejoined, “I do have a project that might interest you.” Whereupon he told me he had just been appointed director of the Manzanar War Relocation Camp north of the small town of Lone Pine in the Owens Valley. He described in detail the plight of the Nisei, American citizens born here of Japanese descent, who were suddenly uprooted from their homes, farms, industries, and offices after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Under the shock of this terrible event, the military had panicked at the possibility of an invasion from the Pacific by the Japanese and recommended the removal of all West Coast Nisei, “for their mutual safety.” With the military’s advice, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. I am sure he had no realization of its tragic implications; thousands of loyal Japanese-American citizens were denied their basic civil rights. Unfortunately, this decision had the support of a great number of Caucasian citizens throughout the West, who racially disliked the Japanese-Americans as social and economic competitors.

  Executive Order 9066 was swiftly executed. The War Relocation Authority was formed, and several camps in isolated areas in western states were hastily constructed. Operated at first by the U.S. Army, civilian directors and staff were duly appointed, although the camps continued to be “protected” by the military.

  The great documentary photographer Dorothea Lange made some moving photographs that reveal the despair, bewilderment, and misery of the thousands of American citizens as they were apprehended and isolated almost as prisoners of war. While the first months at the camps were bleak and severe, there was none of the neglect and brutality we associate with European and Asiatic concentration and POW camps.

  When Ralph Merritt became director of Manzanar, he found the occupants restless and uncertain, yet striving to turn the camp into a little island of civilization for themselves. He governed with fairness and frankness, stressing the principles of democracy and freely admitting the error of the relocation decision. “As nothing can be done, we must make the best of it and I shall help you all I can.” His attitude revived community spirit and made life more bearable for all.

  He proposed a photographic project where I would interpret the camp and its people, their daily life, and their relationship to their community and their environment. He said, “I cannot pay you a cent, but I can put you up and feed you.” I immediately accepted the challenge and first visited Manzanar in the late fall of 1943.

  The gasoline ration board in Yosemite was very cooperative, providing ample fuel and adequate tires for the hundreds of miles of driving between Yosemite and Manzanar: about one hundred sixty miles over Tioga Pass in summer but four hundred miles in winter via Bakersfield and the southern passes.

  The Owens Valley was once a very beautiful agricultural area. Bountiful streams flowing from the High Sierra provided life for the soil. In the early 1900s, rapidly expanding Los Angeles, about three hundred miles to the south, usurped the water rights to practically all of the bounty of the snows, as well as the water from the streams that flow into Mono Lake at the north end of the valley. All waters were channeled through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, an engineering wonder at the time, to the burgeoning urban sprawl of the thirsty city. Before this environmental disaster, the valley was green, the air pure, and the community of farmers was in economic balance.

  My first impression of Manzanar was of a dry plain on which appeared a flat rectangular layout of shacks, ringed with towering mountains. These shacks created a mood that was not relieved by the entrance gate and its military guards. Arriving at the administration building, I was met by Ralph and his staff, led to my quarters, and then given a cursory tour of the camp. Under a low overhang of gray clouds, the row upon row of black tar-paper shacks were only somewhat softened by occasional greenery. However, the interiors of the shacks, most softened with flowers and the inimitable taste of the Japanese for simple decoration, revealed not only the family living spaces but all manner of small enterprises: a printing press that issued the Manzanar Free Press, music and art studios, a library, several churches (Christian, Buddhist, and Shinto), a clinic-hospital, business offices, and so on.

  Everyone seemed constructively occupied, alert, and cheerful. Surrounding the housing area were extensive farms, literally carved out of the desert through backbreaking work. Sufficient water had been obtained for irrigation, and the camp was agriculturally self-sustaining. Under surveillance, a few Nisei were allowed to go into the mountains and find appropriate stones to build a charming Japanese garden in the camp center.

  I was profoundly affected by Manzanar. As my work progressed, I began to grasp the problems of the relocation and the remarkable adjustment these people had made. It was obvious to me that the project could not be one of heavy reportage with repeated description of the obviously oppressive situation. With admirable strength of spirit, the Nisei rose above despondency and made a life for themselves, a unique micro-civilization under difficult conditions. This was the mood and character I determined to apply to the project.

  At first I was shy, conscious of my intrusion into their privacy. I found the people generous, warm, and cooperative, anxious to talk about the outside world and their own situation. I was amazed at their patient acceptance of their life; they showed surprisingly little animosity and evidenced a sustaining philosophic attitude, awaiting the day when they would be allowed to return to their homes.

  It was very disturbing to witness the arrival of the young army-uniformed Nisei when on leave for a visit with their families. It must have been most difficult for them to be confronted by their parents, incarcerated American citizens—a severe contradiction of the principles for which they were fighting the war. Germans and Italians of American descent were not impounded, nor was the large population of Nisei in Hawaii. It was a nightmare situation.

  While the floor o
f the Owens Valley is desolate, very hot in summer and very cold in winter, the surrounding mountains are spectacular, especially the Sierra Nevada on the west, culminating in Mount Whitney rising fourteen thousand five hundred feet above the valley floor. The Inyo Range to the east is more of desert character and of lower elevation but is very beautiful in its own way. I have been accused of sentimental conjecture when I suggest that the beauty of the natural scene stimulated the people in the camp. No other relocation center could match Manzanar in this respect, and many of the people spoke to me of these qualities and their thankfulness for them.

  The grand view of the Sierra from Manzanar visually excited me, and I knew I must make some inner-assigned photographs, though it took an extensive search to find the image that clearly communicated what I saw and felt. Behind and to the west of the camp was a huge field of boulders, extending several miles to the base of Mount Williamson. One day I sensed the conditions to be right: there was a glorious storm playing across the crest of the Sierra and I watched as it approached the peak of Mount Williamson. I drove out to the boulders and set up my 8x10 camera on the car’s rooftop platform. This perspective allowed me to compose the photograph with the boulders in the foreground, progressing to Mount Williamson in the midst of a dramatic mix of shafts of sunlight and storm clouds.

  Another of my best-known photographs was made while I worked at Manzanar—Winter, Sunrise, The Sierra Nevada, From Lone Pine, California. I had come to know the Owens Valley well and felt there was a photograph of the Sierra and Mount Whitney to be made near the little town of Lone Pine, some fifteen miles south of Manzanar. I made a number of efforts at different times of the day, but did not achieve the desired image, deciding it must be made at sunrise.

  One very cold and very early morning in December of 1943, Virginia and I arose before dawn and drove to Lone Pine. I selected a spot not far from the main highway, parked the car, and set up my camera on the platform. We then huddled together in the car, gratefully sipping from a thermos of steaming coffee that Virginia had prepared. Soon, the sun rose above the Inyo Range behind us, glowing pinkly upon the Sierra summits. I scrambled up to my camera, knowing the time was close but feeling it was not quite right. Beams of light began highlighting the brushy trees in the foreground of my composition; they also illuminated the rear end of a horse as it calmly grazed in front of the trees. Frustrated, I watched as the light appeared, just as I had hoped. Serendipitously, the horse momentarily turned to profile and I made the exposure. Within seconds, the tonal variety that created the mood of the scene was destroyed by a flood of even sunlight.

  Nancy Newhall, acting curator of the Photography Department at MOMA while Beaumont was in the army, insisted upon an exhibition at the museum of the Manzanar photographs. Because of scheduling beyond our control, the Manzanar exhibit was not installed in a regular gallery but relegated to display space in the first basement area. Nevertheless, it created much attention and varying comment.

  At the suggestion of Tom Maloney, publisher of U.S. Camera, that the Manzanar project become a book, I assembled photographs from the camp with some of those from the Owens Valley, and also wrote appropriate accompanying text. The book, Born Free and Equal, was published late in 1944. It was poorly printed, publicized, and distributed, perhaps to be expected in wartime. Although the motive of the book was clearly presented in pictures and text, it met with some distressing resistance and was rejected by many as disloyal. I could tolerate the narrow opinions expressed verbally or in the press, but it was painful to receive a few letters from families who had lost men in the conflict; they were bitter and incapable of making objective distinctions between the Nisei and Japanese nationals. How can you adequately reply to a couple who lost their three sons in the Pacific war?

  I wrote in Born Free and Equal:

  You have now met some of the people at Manzanar, seen a small part of their daily life and work. I hope you have become aware of their tragic problem.

  As I write this men are dying and destruction roars in almost every part of the globe. The end is not yet in sight.

  What is the true enemy the democratic peoples are fighting? Collectively, the enemy is every nation and every individual of predatory instincts and actions. We fight to assure a cooperative civilization in opposition to the predatory Nazi-Fascist-Militarist methods and ideologies of government. We must prosecute this war with all the ruthless efficiency, stern realism, and clarity of purpose that is at our command. We must not compromise or appease. We must assure our people that there will be no further human catastrophes such as the destruction of Rotterdam, the annihilation of Lidice, the rape of Nanking, or the decimation of the Jews.

  We must be certain that, as the rights of the individual are the most sacred elements of our society, we will not allow passion, vengeance, hatred, and racial antagonism to cloud the principles of universal justice and mercy. We may well close with these words of Dillon S. Myer: “If we are to succumb to the flames of race hate, which spread with fury to every markedly different group within a nation, we will be destroyed spiritually as a democracy, and lose the war even though we win every battle.”

  Born Free and Equal was but the first of my attempts at the photographic essay, a form that I found to be the most complex task in my professional career. The allowed time was usually too short, the writer too busy to talk coherently about his part of the project, and the weather often belligerent.

  While documentary photography was a major concern of European photographers, it was not recognized as such in America (with a few exceptions, such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis) until the 1930s with the advent of both the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine. Rumors to the contrary, I never discounted the importance of the documentary vision in social and historical applications, though I resented the many implications and statements that it was the only important form of serious photography.

  In 1931, in a review for The Fortnightly of an exhibit of work by the great French photographer Eugene Atget, who over many years photographed the city of Paris, I wrote:

  The charm of Atget lies not in his mastery of the plates and papers of his time, nor in the quaintness of costume, architecture, and humanity as revealed in his pictures, but in his equitable and intimate point of view. It is a point of view which we are pleased to call “modem” and which is essentially timeless. His work is a revelation of the simplest aspects of his environment. There is no superimposed symbolic motive, no tortured application of design, no intellectual axe to grind. The Atget prints are direct and emotionally clean records of a rare and subtle perception.…

  Life magazine helped expand the photograph as document into full visual essays with heart and social intention, nourishing the new American photo-journalist. One of the most successful Life photographers was Margaret Bourke-White, whom I first met in 1934. She had just moved into her studio on one of the top floors of the Chrysler Building and I recall a giant aluminum gargoyle clearly visible through the large window. Her assistant, a nervous young man, said, “Please be seated,” but there was nothing to sit on. Bourke-White entered the room briskly and cordially greeted me. She was dressed with great chic, on the edge of flamboyancy, and moved and talked with marvelous vitality. She explained that she was preparing for an assignment and could give me but a few moments—“My helper is checking my cameras right now.” At that moment a loud crash came from the adjacent room; the camera and tripod on which the young man was working had suddenly collapsed and were severely damaged. Bourke-White reacted with composure, saying to him, “Please call for another Speed Graphic right away.” Stating she would pick up the camera on the way to the airport, she gave me a warm adieu, abandoning me in her pristine office with the broken camera still lying on the floor.

  Bourke-White, constantly on assignment, flew everywhere, in all types of planes, often under perilous conditions. Her stamina and courage brought forth astonishing photographs, expressing a high level of photojournalism. In late 1947, followin
g my Guggenheim-funded trip to Alaska we met again as seat-mates on a plane from Chicago to New York and had a lively conversation. I had recently enjoyed her book, published in 1937, You Have Seen Their Faces, with text by Erskine Caldwell, her husband at that time. I told her I found it a moving and deeply observed portrait of the South and its racial blight.

  As we chatted, Meg told me that her working method, whenever possible, was to set the shutter at 1/100 second and make exposures with every lens stop from f/4.5 to f/22; one was certain to be perfect! We continued discussing technical shoptalk, though her experience was with the camera, not in the darkroom. Photojournalists rarely do their own negative processing or printing. They are field people, and their basic craft is concentrated on mastering their subjects and applying the sharp, visual, reporter’s eye. For them, photographic image content is the dominant consideration, print quality a distant second.

  As we approached New York, deep in bourbon and professional discussion, it was obvious there was a weather problem. The plane circled for more than an hour, mostly in thick clouds, and Meg became visibly nervous. When the pilot announced, “I am instructed to make a fast descent to three thousand feet [from twenty-four thousand feet],” she grasped my hand in a viselike grip, releasing it only as we came out of the dive over Brooklyn.

  She said, “You know, I have flown zillions of miles but I am always nervous about anything unusual.” I admitted I had also been worried during the steep, swift dive.

  Every few months our lives briefly touched without intention. One day in 1948, I was in the office of the picture editor of Fortune discussing a possible assignment, when Meg barged in, an astonishing vision in a full, white Astrakhan coat and cap.