by Ansel Adams
A year later Askhenazy returned and I photographed him as he practiced at the piano in our gallery, surrounded by my photographs. He liked the results so much that two of those portraits were used as album covers for his recordings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier, both on London Records. I was also able to achieve some successful portraits of Ashkenazy’s lovely wife, Dody.
Over subsequent visits I continue to be impressed with Ashkenazy’s quiet and modest personality, his twinkle of humor, and his incredible, architectural, and poetic approach to music. His performances, on record or in person, bring the keen realization of the almost infinite dimensions of great music, especially that of the abstract.
It occurred to me that this is what I want my photographs to accomplish in their own way. I know some photographs that are extraordinary in their power and conviction, but it is difficult in photography to overcome the superficial power of subject; the concept and statement must be quite convincing in themselves to win over a dramatic and compelling subject situation.
As I listen to great music—Bach and Beethoven to Stravinsky and Bartok—I am dominated by the music, but my mind seeks resolution to questions that have concerned me for most of my life. While I have never looked for literal or literary meanings in music or art, I have communicated critical thoughts, unwittingly, in those terms. For many years I have distrusted the dominance of words and believe communication can and will embrace other means of expression and description. The aural architecture of music is a particular pattern of perception and revelation. I believe that all art is a mystique and does not tolerate the dissections of cold critical analysis and aesthetic definitions.
24.
Harmony
DURING THE PROGRESS OF MY GENES IN THIS LIFETIME, I have come to realize the potential of greatness as well as the depths of depravity of the human species to which I belong: the beacons of civilization radiate hope and faith in the world, in contrast to the shadows of destruction and emptiness. Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truths of the world, though they are revealed as being timid and shallow as awareness of the universe expands.
I have known people of great wealth and compassion and others of equal wealth and power with no concept of the dedication to creative effort or the generosity of heart and spirit. I have known people of little means who have given so much to the world in the areas of art, science, and the simple situations of living, now and for the future. While only touching the fringes of environmental problems, I am happy to have been able to have had some small effect on the increasing awareness of the world situation through both my photographs and my vocal assertions. Far too many people think lightly of idealistic attitudes and do not understand that this idealism is not involuted, but directed outward for the benefit of the world and the people living upon it. I believe the ultimate objective of life lies in creative and productive work; devotion to business and money, as ends in themselves, are but phases of a developing civilization.
After living a long life, I am often asked what I think the future holds. I know little more about the future now than I did eighty years ago. What I feel about the future is another matter. The vast surge of population is certain to affect the environment and the essential resources, to say nothing of natural beauty and wilderness values. No matter what we think about the tangible and intangible situations in the world about us, we cannot ignore that the fate of humanity must remain our prime consideration. The threat of nuclear war overshadows all aspects of life; should it occur, the problems of the environment would not exist—there would be no environment and few if any people to contemplate it and consider better paths for humanity to follow.
I know the arguments for capitalism and both the real and potential terror of right-wing brutality. The stock market soars while the desolation of unemployment and poverty increases. Give me all the slick economic and social theories you have; I shall trust none of them until I believe in my heart and see with my eyes that they serve mankind today and in the future.
While an autobiography must be in retrospect, it may also treat of dreams of what the years to come may promise. In wisdom gathered over time, I have found that every experience is a form of exploration. Wandering over the windy sand dunes as a child was a venture of wonder and discovery, all taking place in little more than a square mile of intricate beauty. I can still recall the feeling and sound of sand as I shuffled through it, and the dune grass, shrubs, and flowers, all displayed in inviting disorder. Near the cliffs west of Baker Beach lay exposed areas of clay on which the sand had once paused and moved on. In spring, after the showers, these depressions held still pools of shallow water alive with tiny larvae, insects, and green plants. Moving in circles about the dunes provided a journey without end, more mysterious when the fog billowed in from the sea. Late in the day the fog would thin; long streamers of mist would partially shield the sun; its veiled circle cast delicate shadows of the grasses upon the sand and edged the dune contours with pale light. In the early years I could only feel what I was experiencing. Later I could recall the visions and integrate them with daily life and events in the world of music and activity that were accumulating around me.
We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion. Many refuse to admit it; some make mystical stews about it; I feel a mystery exists. There are certain times when, as on the whisper of wind, there comes the clear and quiet realization that there is indeed a presence in the world, a nonhuman entity that is not necessarily inhuman. I believe we are born with an incredible program for our life to be, tucked away in a small cranium and pressing to grow and function. I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures: there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision—they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence.
I believe that whatever happens, such must be natural. It may be an occurrence beyond normal, rational explanation or it may simply be a construct of the mind. I have had some experiences that I cannot explain; I can only attest they are true and they baffle me. I sense a relationship between the inner-worldness of art and the outer-worldness of psychic experience.
I had acquired a new Pontiac station wagon one Saturday morning in the early 1940s and took father, mother, wife, aunt, and both children out for a first ride. I started down West Clay Park and had an overwhelming conviction that something was vitally wrong with the car, yet it seemed to be performing perfectly. I continued a few blocks out Clement Street to a mechanic I knew who was open on Saturdays. I explained my problem and lack of evidence and asked him to look over the front suspension, tires, and steering. He was skeptical but agreed to examine the car. Finally he crawled out from underneath and said, with an amazed expression, “You nearly lost your tie rod!” He showed me that the cotter pin had fallen out of a very important bolt that held the tie rod together; in a short distance the tie rod could have come apart and the steering capabilities failed, perhaps on one of those famous San Francisco hills. How did I know about the impending failure? There was no difference in the feel of the wheel, for as long as the bolt remained in place the tie rod was intact.
One day in San Francisco, I was walking down a street in the financial district when I received a distinct order to stop. People coming toward me looked at me in surprise as I was transfixed in mid-step. Suddenly a piece of concrete, a foot square, crashed on the sidewalk a few feet in front of me. Workmen on the roof above must have dislodged the deadly missile, but there had been no cry of warning that I could have heard.
Once, Beaumont, Nancy, and I were driving to Yosemite. At that time the Altamont Pass was a climb up a road over a rounded ridge with no visibility around
the other side. The car took the easy grade at forty miles per hour; when about a thousand feet from the top, I was overpowered by an urge to drive off the road. Without any warning to the Newhalls, I quickly pulled over onto the rough shoulder. We were all perplexed at the maneuver. In a few seconds two racing trucks appeared abreast at the top of the hill, completely filling both lanes of the road. We were driving with the wind and in a closed car; we had not heard those trucks.
The enormous complexity of the world leaves me little peace—curiosity kills complacency. If the sun is represented by a ball eight inches in diameter, the Earth (proportionately eight-hundredths of one inch in diameter) would be about seventy-six feet distant. The nearest star would be thirty miles away. To read that the universe contains approximately ten to the one hundred sixtieth power particles is both exciting and completely beyond my comprehension. A rock, a plant, or a man may be considered an entity. The rock changes shape and structure over long periods of time, the plant can grow and flower within days or weeks, and man thinks he is an eternal species.
While watching nasturtiums grow in a redwood box outside our dining alcove, I thought of the complex instructions the cells were receiving from some parent impulse. The tall stalks matured over a few days, with the flowers emerging from the pointed tips. Flowers and leaves turned toward the sun. The nasturtiums grew copiously, creating a miniature green forest, a great cool jungle for ants to explore. Within a week I observed wormholes in some of the leaves. Close examination found small green caterpillars munching away on the undersides; so close in color were they to the leaves that I could see them only when they moved. A progression of bees and Monarch butterflies enjoyed the open blossoms in what appeared to be a routine visitation pattern.
I was looking at many millions of cells and trillions of molecules following instructions from a compelling source in some framework of space and time. Each of the countless instructions came from a DNA continuum; genes were at work as they are in our own bodies. Perhaps, the reality of life exists in this continuum and the physical bodies of plants, insects, man, and all life are but refueling stations of existence. The pollen of these flowers was carried off into the world by the bees and the wind; the plants died but their life is ever renewed.
My private glimpses of some ideal reality create a lasting mood that has often been recalled in some of my photographs. I remember the sound of a particular registration of the organ in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, the voicing of one chord in a Bach Partita I had once achieved and never again could duplicate, and the timbre of a certain voice I heard only once from an adjacent room. The subtle changes of light across a waterfall moved me as did a singular vista of a far-off mountain under a leaden sky. Others might well have not responded at all. Deep resonances of spirit exist, giving us glimpses of a reality far beyond our general appreciation and knowledge.
The gigantic scale of the universe was just being revealed when I was a youth and I knew a little about what I was seeing in the crisp Sierra nights. One cold, moonless summer evening I was camped out at ten thousand feet elevation at Fletcher Lake. From my sleeping bag I witnessed an enormous glitter that was overpowering in majesty and mystery. The greater information we have today would only intensify the questions and the humility that the presence of innumerable worlds evoke. No matter how many stars we see in a clear mountain sky, we know now that they are but a minuscule fragment of the total population of suns and planets in the billions of galaxies out there in the incomprehensible void.
The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit. After eighty years, I scan a long perspective. I think of a mantra of Gaelic origin given me fifty years ago by Ella Young. It echos everything I believe:
I know that I am one with beauty
And that my comrades are one.
Let our souls be mountains,
Let our spirits be stars,
Let our hearts be worlds.
Photographs
At eight months, 1902
Adams family house. San Francisco, 1903 (by C. H.Adorns)
With Father, Mother, and a friend, Yosemite National Park, 1916
Grandfather Bray, Mother, Aunt Mary, and Father in our living room, c. 1918
Playing the piano, c. 1922
Hiking the trails, Yosemite National Park, c. 1925
Our wedding day, January 2, 1928, in front of Harry Cassie Best painting
Working in my darkroom, San Francisco, c. 1930 (copyright © 1985 by Virginia Adams)
Albert Bender, c. 1930
Porrait, 1930s (by Cedric Wright)
Edward Weston, Tenaya Lake, Yosemite National Park, 1937
Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, New York City, c. 1939
Alfred Stieglitz, c. 1945
Packing the car before our Southwest trip, with my son Michael and Cedric Wright in Yosemite, 1941 (copyright © 1985 by Viriginia Adams
Lobbying President Ford at the White House, 1975 (by Ricardo Thomas, courtesy the Gerald R. Ford Library)
Remonstrating with President Reagan, Los Angeles, June 30, 1983 (by Michael Evans, courtesy the White House)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCES
Ansel Adams. Advertisement. U.S. Camera, volume 12 (November 1940), p. 15.
(unacknowledged). “Christmas Comes But Once a Year.” Life, volume 5, no. 26 (December 26, 1938), cover and p. 16.
. Making a Photograph. London and New York: The Studio Publications, 1935, pp. 13–14.
. “The New Photography.” Modern Photography 1934–5. London and New York: The Studio Publications, 1935, p. 14.
. “Photography” (on Eugene Atget). The Fortnightly (November 6, 1931), p. 25.
. “Photography” (on Edward Weston). The Fortnightly (December 4, 1931), p. 25.
. “Photo-Murals.” U.S. Camera, volume 12 (1940), pp. 52–53.
. “Retrospect: Nineteen-Thirty-One.” Sierra Club Bulletin, volume XVII, no. 1 (February 1932), pp. 1, 2, 4, 9, 10.
. Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. Berkeley: The Archetype Press, 1938, from unnumbered foreword.
. “Ski-Experience.” Sierra Club Bulletin, volume XVI, no. 1 (February 1931), pp. 44–45.
. “U.S. Camera Yosemite Photo Forum 1941.” U.S. Camera, volume 15 (March 1941), pp. 56–57.
(unacknowledged). “Wizards of the Coming Wonders.” Life, volume 36, no. 1 (January 4, 1954), pp. 93–94.
and Mary Austin. Taos Pueblo. Copyright © 1930, Ansel Easton Adams, unnumbered. Facsimile reprint, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977, unnumbered. (Originally published 1930.)
James Alinder. The Unknown Ansel Adams. Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1982.
and Wright Morris. Picture America. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1982.
Mary Alinder. Ansel Adams: The Eightieth Birthday Retrospective, Monterey. The Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, 1982.
Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell. You Have Seen Their Faces. New York: Viking, 1937. Reprint, New York: Arno, 1975.
Witter Bynner. “To a Guest Named Ansel.” By permission of the Houghton Library.
Robert Cahn. “Ansel Adams, Environmentalist.” Sierra, volume 64, no. 3 (May/June 1979), pp. 31, 33–49.
Sean Callahan. “Countdown to Moonrise.” American Photographer, volume V, no. 1 (January 1981), pp. 30–31.
Imogen Cunningham. After Ninety. Introduction by Margaretta Mitchell. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
. Letter written to Ansel Adams dated February 10, 1964. Copyright © 1978 by the Imogen Cunningham Trust.
John Paul Edwards. “Group F:64.” Camera Craft (March 1935), pp. 107–110, 112–113.
Andrea Gray. Ansel Adams An American Place, 1936. Tucson: Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1982.
Robert Hughes. “Master of the Yosemite” (cover story). Time, volume 114, no. 10 (September 3, 1979), pp. 3, 36–44.
Marjorie Hunter. “An Ex-Ranger Gets a
Personal Plea to Help the National Parks.” The New York Times (January 28, 1975). Copyright © 1975 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
J. M. Hutchings. In the Heart of the Sierras. Yosemite Valley: The Old Cabin, 1886, pp. 56–57.
Robinson Jeffers. “Night” and “To the Rock That Will Be a Cornerstone of the House.” Copyright © 1924, 1925 and renewed 1952, 1953 by Robinson Jeffers. Reprinted from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, by permission of Random House, Inc.
Edwin H. Land. Letter written to Ansel Adams dated February 1, 1949. Copyright © 1985 Edwin H. Land. All Rights Reserved.
. Statement for American Academy of Arts and Sciences, April 2, 1979, as it appears on a carved tablet in the Academy building. Copyright © 1979 Edwin H. Land. All Rights Reserved.
David H. McAlpin. Letters/excerpts written to Ansel Adams dated September 7, 1940, and January 16, 1972. Copyright © 1985 David H. McAlpin. All Rights Reserved.
Wright Morris. The Home Place. New York: Scribner, 1948. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968.
Beaumont Newhall. The History of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982.
. Letters/excerpts written to Ansel Adams dated September 17, 1940; February 27, 1944;