Ansel Adams

by Ansel Adams

With my students I did not introduce artifacts into the scene as did Ed, preferring the naturally found object for all its promise to the inquiring eye. I took students to parks and beaches, homes and factories, vacant lots and car dumps. Here they were confronted with subjects that seemed hopeless. The students would stand around with quizzical looks on their faces, expressing “What in hell can anyone photograph here?” As in Yosemite, I looked for something as simple as a cluster of pine needles or a few pebbles, and instructed them to observe possible relationships of shapes and values. I had each student look at what I had put together on my ground glass. I always insisted that they could not use my subject and composition but must find rewarding organizations for themselves. In a short time, most all of the students would be producing perceptive results and become intensely excited over the art of seeing. Literally, flowers bloomed in the desert and the students entered an era of exploration.

  At the Art Center we did extensive basic photographic training for the armed forces and for the photographic departments of the airplane factories. Working with students from the Signal Corps, I recall a typical exercise that I devised: the class was in the basement with cameras secured in their cases and I stood at the school entrance on 7th Street. When I saw a streetcar coming, I bellowed, “ATTACK!” As the students rushed upstairs I yelled, “GET THAT STREETCAR AS IT HITS THE LINE-OF-SIGHT OF THE POWER POLE!” They yanked cameras from their cases, and attempted to set the focus by feel while they planned the exposure. The aperture click stops were also set by feel, shutter speeds by so many winds of the focal-plane shutter. The next task was to anticipate the right moment to make the picture. The average results were: one-third had streetcar touching the pole, one-third were late, and one-third early. As soon as the shutter clicked, the students dashed downstairs to develop the negatives for a minute in a highly concentrated solution. Fixed for thirty seconds, rinsed in water, then put through an alcohol bath for fast drying, they were then brought to me for evaluation. Some students accomplished the entire exercise in six minutes, including the up and down races on the stairs. The negatives were certainly not expressive images, but some were good solutions to the time problem common in a military situation. I found the project approach to be very effective: students should be given a reason for learning.

  The city of Los Angeles had set up a civil defense program and the photography department of the center was asked to help. I worked out a system of corpse identification that could be very valuable in a civil disaster. A mirror was held close to the victim’s head and a photograph made, showing both profile and approximate full-face. I took my students to the Los Angeles morgue to practice one night a week. The hard-boiled attendant greeted us with, “Good ev’n, people; you wanna gent or a dame? I got lots—wanna check first?” The desolation lay not with the bodies but in the totality of the bleakness of the basement room with its grim, white walls, its chilling temperature, the ghoulish mentality of the attendant, the cold fluorescent lights, and the acrid smell of formaldehyde. Fortunately, the dead were not aware of their immediate environment.

  I remember one dignified-looking old man wheeled out as one of our models. I noted little beads of perspiration on his forehead; the attendant said, “Too much embalmin’ pressure—that’s formaldehyde comin’ through.” Whereupon he wiped it off with his sleeve.

  The semester came to an end. On my last day in Los Angeles I packed my car with all my belongings and had a few farewell drinks with staff and students. Later I met with my last class at the morgue and worked until midnight. I then set forth for Carmel, arriving at Edward Weston’s home after an early breakfast on the road. I was very glad to see him. He looked at me and said, “Where in hell have you been? You smell like you’ve been embalmed!” I told the truth and was again scolded for getting too involved with the outside world.

  Tom Maloney asked me to conduct U.S. Camera Forums in Yosemite that summer of 1940. I invited Edward to teach with me. He contributed greatly during this workshop, more by example than by critiquing student photographs. He would set up his camera, let the students scan the ground glass, and then answer questions. When he was asked to look into a student’s camera, he gave recommendations and sometimes moved the camera a little to clarify the composition. Edward concisely defined photographic composition as “the strongest way of seeing.”

  We made many day-long trips to Mariposa, Hornitos, and Meyers Ranch, just west of Yosemite Valley. We also traveled east on the Tioga Road into the high country of Tenaya Lake and the Tuolumne Sierra. Edward was especially excited when he was surrounded by the granite landscape of Tenaya Lake: glaciated rock, erratic boulders brought thousands of years ago by the glaciers from the distant summit peaks, and the beautiful Sierra junipers growing in the bare native rock. Some of Edward’s finest work was done in this area.

  However, with all he had to offer, Edward did not really enjoy teaching, and our brief association was very much the exception, not the rule. This workshop was the beginning of what was to become my longest, ongoing teaching experience. I wrote about it in U.S. Camera, in 1941:

  The Forum definitely is not a school. It compares with no known undertaking in the photographic world. It offers opportunity for the exchange of ideas and for the observation of methods and procedures. It does not compete with institutions of instruction; rather, it is helpful to all of them, serving as a stimulator of ideas.

  Each day’s program was somewhat as follows: the group assembled and drove to some spot relatively near at hand on the floor of Yosemite Valley. While assisting others to set-up and compose, and solve their technical problems, Weston and Adams would perhaps make a photograph, with full explanation, or work out problems of composition on the ground glass of their cameras for all to see. All this would be accompanied with a running discussion of pictures, points-of-view, ideas. The attitude and viewpoint of the individual was always stressed; imitation of what Adams or Weston had done, or were doing, was never condoned. The visualization of the final photograph was paramount in all these discussions and demonstrations.

  For that 1940 workshop we had twelve students with total receipts of five hundred and five dollars. I received two hundred as organizer, director and teacher, Edward one hundred fifty, our sponsor, Best’s Studio, one hundred, and the remaining fifty-five dollars was applied to expenses. Fortunately, as the years increased, so did our income.

  World War II and then my Guggenheim Fellowship years caused inevitable delays, but in June of 1955 I began annual Ansel Adams Workshops that continued in Yosemite through 1981. Thousands of students attended over the years, and I feel it provided an intense short-term learning experience that has been an important alternative in photographic education of the last several decades. Students have come from every state and many countries and such excellent photographer/teachers have joined with me as Arnold Newman, Mary Ellen Mark, Marion Patterson, Al Weber, Ruth Bernhard, and Morley Baer. Because of health, age, and the effects of heat and altitude, I transferred the workshop to Carmel in 1982, under the direction of The Friends of Photography, where we continue, with vigor and in the same tradition.

  In 1945 Ted Spencer, then president of the San Francisco Art Association, knowing of my interest in photographic education, asked me to set up a Department of Photography at the California School of Fine Arts. I was most excited. Ted designated a large area in the basement of the main structure and also one of the spacious studios.

  Building a darkroom was another matter. I worked for several days on sketches, trying to retain a long line of windows on the north wall; I thought they would prove an ideal illumination for a workbench for mounting, spotting, and other aspects of print preparation. I finally devised a plan comprising a group of darkrooms and a large central room as a demonstration space.

  Ted took one look at my drawings and gently asked, “What about the circulation?” I said I honestly could think up no alternative plan that would keep the windows.

  He then replied, “Why do you have t
o keep the windows?” as he quickly made a lucid sketch, which, by disregarding the windows entirely, vastly improved the circulation and even gave space for three additional darkrooms and a larger demonstration area. I heartily agreed and admitted I had had an obsession about those windows because of my affinity for natural light. I also had overlooked the fact that night classes were planned and we would have to illuminate the workbench anyway. This problem, easily solved by an architect, was also a fine lesson in priority thinking.

  The photography area was designed perfectly. The compartments were efficiently built with service station style construction. When the estimates came in I was a bit chilled—ninety-five hundred dollars, without equipment! Ted said, “It’s your baby. See what you can do to raise the money.” After a discouraging beginning, I finally obtained ten thousand dollars from the Columbia Foundation. I also raised an additional twenty-five hundred for equipment. The project today would cost many times that amount.

  Then the unexpected occurred. The painters, sculptors, printmakers, and ceramicists arose in wrath and protest; photography is not an art, they claimed, and had no place in an art school. Besides, the other artists insisted they had insufficient space as it was. Ted was really provoked but he stood fast. He knew photography is an art form and he was determined that it become a part of the school curriculum. I was very unpopular around the school until it became obvious that my basic teaching in that medium, in both craft and aesthetic direction, was agreeable and progressive.

  I wrote to Ted in 1947:

  I think that the students do reflect my influence, and—joking aside—maybe I should stop fussing around and just be an influence! Actually what has happened is this—by some trick of fate I developed my work at the time of a general renaissance of straight photography, and I happened to be one of the very few who were articulate in writing, teaching, and lecturing. My rationale of the exposure-development procedures certainly struck a new note in mechanical approach. I did not invent anything—just restated facts in terms of practical use. I am sure anyone with normal intelligence could have accomplished as much—but it just happened to be me who walked into the arena at the right time.

  While each situation is a singular event, there are three basic questions I ask my students to consider when evaluating their photographs: What is seen? How is it seen? How is it executed? What is seen is a matter of time and place and naturally leads to how it is seen, the visualization. Execution relates to craft and acceptable print quality. For example, the subject might clearly suggest a certain quality of light—was this visualized and achieved in the finished print? Are the print values pleasing or are the high values depressed? If so, I try to help determine the cause. Did the photographer take full advantage of the near-far aspects of the subject? Perhaps moving closer to the subject would increase the sense of space and scale.

  A helpful tool I developed was teaching students to “read photographs,” that is, to attempt their own visualization from what they suppose the reality might have been while viewing a variety of images of ordinary subjects. I have found it most rewarding to study pictures of all kinds, trying to put myself in the position of the camera in relation to the subject and to visualize images I might find in the same situations. It becomes an interesting exploration, rather uncertain because I can only assume the reality from the image before me.

  However, as much as I loved teaching, after a year at the School of Fine Arts I found myself in a struggle for enough time for my own work. Receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship in late 1946 tipped the balance; I could afford to use the next year to photograph for myself. My problem was to find another photography teacher to take my place. The Newhalls, knowing of my dilemma, wrote and suggested their friend Minor White. Minor had been photographing for over ten years, with his progress interrupted by service in World War II. He returned from the war to New York City, determined to discover what was happening in the world of creative photography. Visiting Stieglitz had been a profound experience for him, as it had been for me twelve years earlier. Minor told me that the concrete shell of his life was broken open by the remark from Stieglitz, “Have you ever been in love? Only then can you photograph.”

  Minor wrote of our first meeting in Memorable Fancies:

  Ansel met me at the train yesterday. This morning in his class at the California School of Fine Arts the whole muddled business of exposure and development fell into place. This afternoon I started teaching his Zone System. Ansel did not know it, but his gift of photographic craftsmanship was the celebration of a birthday.

  After seeing his photographs and observing his teaching of the students over the space of a few weeks, I quickly recognized that Minor was a remarkable photographer and a potentially great teacher. I recommended him as my replacement, and he swiftly established himself as one of the most important teachers at the school and endeared himself to the art community.

  Minor was a very different person and teacher from me. The best description I can give of his teaching is that it involved intense “verbalization”—the talking out of creative intentions, concepts, and directions. Minor required maximum quality and conviction of a photographer’s images, all implying superior craft. However, it was the inner message of the photograph that most concerned him; he always wanted to know the thoughts, feelings, and reactions of the artist to his subject and his image.

  Many were the vigorous yet friendly arguments we endured on this subject over the ensuing years. I remain convinced that the medium must explain itself in its own terms. I agreed with Edward Weston’s frequently spoken Louis Armstrong quote, “Man, if you has to ask, ‘What Is It?’ you ain’t never goin’ to know.” For me, a photograph begins as the visualization of the image which represents the excitement and the perception of that moment and situation. The print represents excitement, perception, and expression (performance). Meaning is found in the final print and only in terms of the print itself. For me, this meaning may vary a little over time and circumstance. For the viewer, the meaning of the print is his meaning. If I try to impose mine by intruding descriptive titles, I insult the viewer, the print, and myself. I hope to enhance, not destroy, that delicate imaginative quality that should be expected from any form of art.

  I recall an excellent example of imposed meaning. I have a photograph of a cemetery statue, an “Angel of Sorrow,” in front of a group of oil wells near Long Beach. When I came across this dichotomous scene I was excited by the intangible improbability of the juxtaposition of the objects and the almost sublime quality of light. I made the first print about 1939 and did not resuscitate the negative until about 1970, making a large print that gave me the same excitement I felt at the time of its exposure. A conservationist friend saw the print and became entranced with it as a symbol of pollution and death. I cannot deny him his meaning, although I did explain that it was very far from the original experience. When I encounter a work of art in any form, I make no effort to surmise what it signified to the artist; I can only accept or reject it on my own emotional-aesthetic terms.

  Another aspect of Minor’s philosophy that I disagreed with was that he believed that the critical attitude should always be with the artist: before, during, and after the creative act. I believe in the use of intuition before and during the creative act, with the critical attitude being applied only after. Study, observe, practice, perfect the craft of the medium, and then go into the world with trust in your intuitive creative appreciations and ability to see. When a photograph is made, I consider it an accomplished fact. Then, I go on with the next creative effort. To brood over something irrevocably done is a waste of time. Work, of course, must be evaluated with honesty so that we can learn from our mistakes and progress. In expressive photographs, psychological and creative situations of the greatest complexity are revealed that are far beyond conscious awareness.

  Minor became known for his mystical approach to photography. I could never establish an adequate definition of just what this approach was, most prob
ably because I am definitely not attracted to those concepts nor to astrology, another favorite subject of his in his later years. Minor drew horoscopes of each applicant before deciding to take her or him on as a student. However, I have no question whatever of his dedicated sincerity. He stimulated students and associates to an astonishing degree, as their continued enthusiasm and productivity attest.

  Minor and I strongly agreed that nothing takes the place of constant effort; the artist has no time or energy to waste. Bohemian indolence is the pastime of the inadequate. Whether I walk at Point Lobos, fly in an airplane, move in a new environment, or relax in my home, I am always seeking to relate one shape or value to another, seeing an image in my mind’s eye. It is a glorious and rewarding exploration. If something moves me, I do not question what it is or why; I am content to be moved. If I am sufficiently moved and it has aesthetic potential, I will make a picture.

  In retrospect, I feel that Minor was just the right foil for the slightly Calvinistic philosophy of the Group f/64 school that my friends and I professed. We stressed the basic craft as it has seldom been accented before or since. Minor taught a high order of craft as well as the introspective attitudes of personal psychology and, later, such Oriental philosophies as Zen. In a sense he added another dimension to the art of photography: perhaps controversial, but convincingly creative.

  Minor eventually became professor of photography at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At first it seemed anachronistic that a mystical and emotionally oriented individual found a place in that cool and awesome center of science and engineering. MIT’s wisdom was revealed in their desire that the rigors of their basic programs be relieved by exposure to creative art. After all, they had Gyorgy Kepes directing the department of architecture, under whose enlightened aegis Minor functioned. Minor, through his teaching, exhibitions, lecturing, and consulting, achieved remarkable and fully justified fame. His portfolios and books place him among the most important figures in twentieth-century photography.