Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…"^[1] and "one of the masters of 20th century photography."^[2] Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography"^[3] because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.

In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.

Life and work[link]

1886–1906: Early life[link]

Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois, the second child and only son of Edward Burbank Weston, an obstetrician, and Alice Jeanette Brett, a Shakespearean actress. His mother died when he was five and he was raised mainly by his sister Mary, whom he called "May" or "Mazie". She was nine years older than he, and they developed a very close bond that was one of the few steady relationships in Weston's life.^[4]

His father remarried when he was nine, but neither Weston nor his sister got along with their new stepmother and stepbrother. After May was married and left their home in 1897, Weston's father devoted most of his time to his new wife and her son. Weston was left on his own much of the time; he stopped going to school and withdrew into his own room in their large home.^[4]

As a present for his 16th birthday Weston's father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Bull's-Eye #2, which was a simple box camera. He took it on vacation in the Midwest, and by the time he returned home his interest in photography was enough to lead him to purchase a used 5 × 7 inch view camera. He began photographing in Chicago parks and a farm owned by his aunt, and developed his own film and prints. Later he would remember that even at that early age his work showed strong artistic merit. He said, "I feel that my earliest work of 1903 ‒ though immature ‒ is related more closely, both with technique and composition, to my latest work than are several of my photographs dating from 1913-1920, a period in which I was trying to be artistic."^[5]

In 1904 May and her family moved to California, leaving Weston further isolated in Chicago. He earned a living by taking a job at a local department store, but he continued to spend most of his free time taking photos, Within two years he felt confident enough of his photography that he submitted his work to the magazine Camera and Darkroom, and in the April, 1906, issue they published a full-page reproduction of his picture Spring, Chicago. This is the first known publication of any of his photographs.

1906–23: Becoming a photographer[link]

Edward Weston, taken by Fred Archer in approximately 1915

At the urging of his sister, Weston left Chicago in the spring of 1906 and moved near May's home in Tropico, California (now a neighborhood in Glendale). He decided to stay there and pursue a career in photography, but he soon realized he needed more professional training. A year later he moved to Effingham, Illinois, in order to enroll in the Illinois School of Photography. They taught a nine-month course, but Weston finished all of the class work in six months. The school refused to give him a diploma unless he paid for the full nine months; Weston refused and instead moved back to California in the spring of 1908.

He briefly worked at the photography studio of George Steckel in Los Angeles, as a negative retoucher. Within a few months he moved to the more established studio of Louis Mojonier. For the next several years he learned the techniques and business of operating a photography studio under Mojonier's direction.

Sometime in the summer of 1908 Weston was introduced to his sister's best friend, Flora May Chandler. She was a grade-school teacher, seven years older than Weston and second cousin to Harry Chandler, who at that time was described as the head of "the single most powerful family in Southern California.".^[6] Chandler had inherited some money when her father died, and although she was not as wealthy as her cousins, Weston recognized that she had enough money to allow him to start working full-time as a photographer.^[7]

On January 30, 1909, Weston and Chandler married in a simple ceremony. The first of their four sons, Edward Chandler Weston (1910–1993), known as Chandler, was born on April 26, 1910. Named after Weston and his wife, he later became a portrait photographer and sometimes assistant to his father.

In 1911 Weston opened his own business, called "The Little Studio", in Tropico. His sister later asked him why he opened his studio in Tropico rather than in the nearby metropolis of Los Angeles, and he replied "Sis, I'm going to make my name so famous that it won’t matter where I live."^[8]

For the next three years he worked alone in his studio, making portraits of children and friends. Even at that early stage of his career he was highly particular about his work; in an interview at that time he said "[photographic] plates are nothing to me unless I get what I want. I have used thirty of them at a sitting if I did not secure the effect to suit me."^[9]

His critical eye paid off as he quickly gained more recognition for his work. He won prizes in national competitions, published several more photographs and wrote articles for magazines such as Photo-Era and American Photography, championing the pictorial style.

On December 16, 1911, Weston's second son, Theodore Brett Weston (1911–1993), was born. He became a long-time artistic collaborator with his father and an important photographer on his own.

"Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston" (1922) by Imogen Cunningham

Sometime in the fall of 1913 Los Angeles photographer Margrethe Mather visited Weston's studio because of his growing reputation, and within a few months they developed an intense relationship.^[10] Weston was a quiet Midwestern transplant to California, and Mather was a part of the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was very outgoing and artistic in a flamboyant way, and her permissive sexual morals were far different from the conservative Weston at the time - Mather had been a prostitute and was bisexual with a preference for women.^[11] Mather presented a stark contrast to Weston's home life; his wife Flora was described as a "homely, rigid Puritan, and an utterly conventional woman, with whom he had little in common since he abhorred conventions"^[12] ‒ and he found Mather's uninhibited lifestyle irresistible and her photographic vision intriguing.

He asked Mather to be his studio assistant, and for the next decade they worked closely together, making individual and jointly signed portraits of such luminaries as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. A joint exhibition of their work in 2001 revealed that during this period Weston emulated Mather's style and, later, her choice of subjects. On her own Mather photographed "fans, hands, eggs, melons, waves, bathroom fixtures, seashells and birds wings, all subjects that Weston would also explore."^[13] A decade later he described her as "the first important person in my life, and perhaps even now, though personal contact has gone, the most important."^[14]

In early 1915 Weston began keeping detailed journals he later came to call his "Daybooks". For the next two decades he recorded his thoughts about his work, observations about photography, and his interactions with friends, lovers and family. On December 6, 1916, a third son, Lawrence Neil Weston, was born. He also followed in the footsteps of his father and became a well-known photographer. It was during this period that Weston first met photographer Johan Hagemeyer, whom Weston mentored and lent his studio to from time to time. Later, Hagemeyer would return the favor by letting Weston use his studio in Carmel after he returned from Mexico. For the next several years Weston continued to earn a living by taking portraits in his small studio which he called "the shack".^[9]

Meanwhile, Flora was spending all of her time caring for their children. Their fourth son, Cole Weston (1919–2003), was born on January 30, 1919, and afterward she rarely had time to leave their home.

Over the summer of 1920 Weston met two people who were part of the growing Los Angeles cultural scene: Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey, known as "Robo" and a woman he called his wife, Tina Modotti. Modotti, who was then known only as a stage and film actress, was never married to Robo, but they pretended to be for the sake of his family. Weston and Modotti were immediately attracted to each other, and they soon became lovers.^[15] Richey knew of Modotti's affair, but he continued to be friends with Weston and later invited him to come to Mexico and share his studio.^[16]

The following year Weston agreed to allow Mather to become an equal partner in his studio. For several months they took portraits that they signed with both of their names. This was only time in his long career that Weston shared credit with another photographer.

Sometime in 1920 he began photographing nude models for the first time. His first models were his wife Flora and their children, but soon thereafter he took at least three nude studies of Mather. He followed these with several more photographs of nude models, the first of dozens of figure studies he would make of friends and lovers over the next twenty years.

Until now Weston had kept his relationships with other women a secret from his wife, but as he began to photograph more nudes Flora became suspicious about what went on with his models. Chandler recalled that his mother regularly sent him on "errands" to his father's studio and asked him to tell her who was there and what they were doing.^[17]

One of the first who agreed to model nude for Weston was Modotti. She became his primary model for the next several years.

In 1922 he visited his sister May, who had moved to Middletown, Ohio. While there he made five or six photographs of the tall smoke stacks at the nearby Armco steel mill. These images signaled a change in Weston's photographic style, a transition from the soft-focus pictorialism of the past to a new, cleaner-edge style. He immediately recognized the change and later recorded it in his notes: "The Middletown visit was something to remember…most of all in importance was my photographing of 'Armco'…That day I made great photographs, even Stieglitz thought they were important!"^[18]

At that time New York City was the cultural center for photography as an art form in America, and Alfred Stieglitz was the most influential figure in photography.^[19] Weston badly wanted to go to New York to meet with him, but he did not have enough money to make the trip. His brother-in-law gave him enough money to continue on from Middletown to New York City, and he spent most of October and early November there. While there he met artist Charles Sheeler, photographers Clarence H. White, Gertrude Kasebier and finally, Stieglitz. Weston wrote that Stieglitz told him, "Your work and attitude reassures me. You have shown me at least several prints which have given me a great deal of joy. And I can seldom say that of photographs."^[20]

Soon after Weston returned from New York, Robo moved to Mexico and set up a studio there to create batiks. Within a short while he had arranged for a joint exhibition of his work and of photographs by Weston, Mather and a few others. In early 1923 Modotti left by train to be with Robo in Mexico, but he contracted smallpox and died shortly before she arrived. Modotti was grief stricken, but within a few weeks she felt well enough that she decided to stay and carry out the exhibition that Robo had planned. The show was a success, and, due in no small part to his nude studies of Modotti, it firmly established Weston's artistic reputation in Mexico.^[21]

After the show closed Modotti returned to California, and Weston and she made plans to return to Mexico together. He wanted to spend a couple of months there photographing and promoting his work, and, conveniently, he could travel under the pretense of Modotti being his assistant and translator.^[22]

The week before he left for Mexico, Weston briefly reunited with Mather and took several nudes of her lying in the sand at Redondo Beach. These images were very different from his previous nude studies - sharply focused and showing her entire body in relation to the natural setting. They have been called the artistic prototypes for his most famous nudes, those of Charis Wilson which he would take more than a decade later.^[23]

1923–27: Mexico[link]

On July 30, 1923, Weston, his son Chandler, and Modotti left on a steamer for the extended trip to Mexico. His wife, Flora, and their other three sons waved goodbye to them at the dock. It's unknown what Flora understood or thought about the relationship between Weston and Modotti, but she is reported to have called out at the dock, "Tina, take good care of my boys."^[24]

They arrived in Mexico City on August 11 and rented a large hacienda outside of the city.. Within a month he had arranged for an exhibition of his work at the Aztec Land Gallery, and on October 17 the show opened to glowing press reviews. He was particularly proud of a review by Marius de Zayas that said "Photography is beginning to be photography, for until now it has only been art."^[25]

The different culture and scenery in Mexico forced Weston to look at things in new ways. He became more responsive to what was in front of him, and he turned his camera on everyday objects like toys, doorways and bathroom fixtures. He also made several intimate nudes and portraits of Modotti. He wrote in his Daybooks:

• The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself…I feel definite in the belief that the approach to photography is through realism.^[26]

Weston continued to photograph the people and things around him, and his reputation in Mexico increased the longer he stayed. He had a second exhibition at the Aztec Land Galley in 1924, and he had a steady stream of local socialites asking him to take their portraits. At the same time, Weston began to miss his other sons back in the U.S. As with many of his actions, though, it was a woman who motivated him most. He had recently corresponded with a woman he had known for several years named Miriam Lerner, and as her letters became more passionate he longed to see her again.^[27]

He and Chandler returned to San Francisco at the end of 1924, and the next month he set up a studio with Hagemeyer. Weston seemed to be struggling with his past and his future during this period. He burned all of his pre-Mexico journals, as though trying to erase the past, and started a new series of nudes with Lerner and with his son Neil. He wrote that these images were "the start of a new period in my approach and attitude towards photography."^[27]

His new relationship with Lerner did not last long, and in August 1925 he returned to Mexico, this time with his son Brett. Modotti had arranged a joint show of their photographs, and it opened the week he returned. He received new critical acclaim, and six of his prints were purchased for the State Museum. For the next several months he concentrated once again on photographing folk art, toys and local scenes. One of his strongest images of this period is of three black clay pots that art historian Rene d'Harnoncourt described as "the beginning of a new art."^[28]

In May 1926 Weston signed a contract with writer Anita Brenner for $1,000 to make photographs for a book she was writing about Mexican folk art. In June he, Modotti and Brett started traveling around the country in search of lesser known native arts and crafts. His contract required him to give Brenner three finished prints from 400 8x10 negatives, and it took him until November of that year to complete the work.^[29] During their travels, Brett received a crash course in photography from his father, and he made more than two dozen prints that his father judged to be of exceptional quality.

By the time they returned from their trip, Weston and Modotti's relationship had crumbled, and within less than two weeks he and Brett returned to California. He never traveled to Mexico again.

1927–35: Glendale to Carmel[link]

Weston initially returned to his old studio in Glendale (previously called Tropico). He quickly arranged a dual exhibition at University of California of the photographs that he and Brett had made the year before. The father showed one hundred prints and the son showed twenty. Brett was only 15 years old at the time.

In February he started a new series of nudes, this time of dancer Bertha Wardell. One of this series, of her kneeling body cut off at the shoulders, is one of Weston's most well-known figure studies. At this same time he met Canadian painter Henrietta Shore, whom he asked to comment on the photos of Wardell. He was surprised by her honest critique: "I wish you would not do so many nudes - you are getting used to them, the subject no longer amazes you ‒ most of these are just nudes."^[30]

He asked to look at her work and was intrigued by her large paintings of sea shells. He borrowed several shells from her, thinking he might find some inspiration for a new still life series. Over the next few weeks he explored many different kinds of shell and background combinations - in his log of photographs taken for 1927 he listed fourteen negatives of shells.^[31] One of these, simply called Nautilus, 1927" (sometimes called Shell, 1927), became one of his most famous images. Modotti called the image "mystical and erotic,"^[32] and when she showed it to Rene d'Harnoncourt he said he felt "weak at the knees."^[33] Weston is known to have made at least twenty-eight prints of this image, more than he had made of any other shell image.^[31]

In September of that year Weston had a major exhibition at Palace of the Legion of Honor. At the open of the show he met fellow photographer Willard Van Dyke, who later introduced Weston to Ansel Adams.

In May, 1928, Weston and Brett made a brief but important trip to the Mojave Desert. It was there that he first explored and photographed landscapes as an art form.^[34] He found the stark rock forms and empty spaces to be a visual revelation, and over a long weekend he took twenty-seven photographs.^[35] In his journal he declared "these negatives are the most important I have ever done."^[36]

Later that year he and Brett moved to San Francisco, where they lived and worked in a small studio owned by Hagemeyer. He made portraits to earn an income, but he longed to get away by himself and get back to his art. In early 1929 he moved to Hagemeyer's cottage in Carmel, and it was there that he finally found the solitude and the inspiration that he was seeking. He placed a sign in studio window that said, "Edward Weston, Photographer, Unretouched Portraits, Prints for Collectors."

He started making regular trips to nearby Point Lobos, where he would continue to photograph until the end of his career. It was there that he learned to fine-tune his photographic vision to match the visual space of his view camera, and the images he took there, of kelp, rocks and wind-blown trees, are among his finest. Looking at his work from this period, one biographer wrote:

• "Weston arranged his compositions so that things happened on the edges; lines almost cross or meet and circular lines just touch the edges tangentially; his compositions were now created exclusively for a space with the proportions of eight by ten. There is no extraneous space nor is there too little."^[37]

In early April, 1929, Weston met photographer Sonya Noskowiak at a party, and by the end of the month she was living with him. As with many of his other relationships, she became his model, muse, pupil and assistant. They would continue to live together for five years.

Intrigued by the many kinds and shapes of kelp he found on the beaches near Carmel, in 1930 Weston began taking close-ups of vegetables and fruits. He made a variety of photographs of cabbage, kale, onions, bananas, and finally, his most iconic image, peppers. In August of that year Noskowiak brought him several green peppers, and over a four-day period he shot at least thirty different negatives. Of these, Pepper No. 30, is among the all-time masterpieces of photography.^[38]

Weston had a series of important one-man exhibitions in 1930-31. The first was at Alma Reed's Delphic Studio Galley in New York, followed closely by a mounting of the same show at the Denny Watrous Gallery in Carmel. Both received rave reviews, including a two-page article in the New York Times Magazine.^[37] These were followed by shows at De Young Museum in San Francisco and the Galerie Jean Naert in Paris.

Although he was succeeding professionally his personal life was very complex. For most of their marriage, Flora was able to take care of their children because of an inheritance from her parents. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 had wiped out most of her savings, and Weston felt increased pressure to help provide more for her and his sons. He described this time as "the most trying economic period of my life."^[37]

In 1932, The Art of Edward Weston, the first book devoted exclusively to Weston's work, was published. It was edited by Merle Armitage and dedicated to Alice Rohrer, an admirer and patron of Weston whose $500 donation helped pay for the book to be published.

During the same time a small group of like-minded photographers in the San Francisco area, led by Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, began informally meeting to discuss their common interest and aesthetics. Inspired by Weston's show at the De Young Museum the previous year, they approached the museum with the idea of mounting a group exhibition of their work. They named themselves Group f/64, and in November, 1932, an exhibition of 80 of their prints opened at the museum. The show was a critical success.

In 1933 Weston bought a 4 × 5 Graflex camera, which was much smaller and lighter than the large view camera he had used for many years. He began taking close-up nudes of Noskowiak and other models. The smaller camera allowed him to interact more with his models, while at the same time the nudes he took during this period began to resemble some of the contorted root and vegetables he had taken the year before.^[39]

In early 1934, "a new and important chapter opened"^[40] in Weston's life when he met Charis Wilson at a concert. Even more than with his previous lovers, Weston was immediately captivated by her beauty and her personality. He wrote: "A new love came into my life, a most beautiful one, one which will, I believe, stand the test of time."^[41] On April 22 he photographed her nude for the first time, and they entered into an intense relationship. He was still living with Noskowiak at that time, but within two weeks he asked her to move out, declaring that for him other women were "as inevitable as the tides".^[42]

Perhaps because of the intensity of his new relationship, he stopped writing in his Daybooks at this same time. Six months later he wrote one final entry, looking back from April 22:

• After eight months we are closer together than ever. Perhaps C. will be remembered as the great love of my life. Already I have achieved certain heights reached with no other love.^[43]

1935–45: Guggenheim grant to Wildcat Hill[link]

In January, 1935 Weston was facing increasing financial difficulties. He closed his studio in Carmel and moved to Santa Monica Canyon, California, where he opened a new studio with Brett. He implored Wilson to come and live with him, and in August 1935 she finally agreed. While she had an intense interest in his work, Wilson was the first woman Weston had lived with since Flora who had no interest in becoming a photographer.^[44] This allowed Weston to concentrate on her as his muse and model, and in turn Wilson devoted her time to promoting Weston's art as his assistant and quasi-agent.

Almost immediately he began taking a new series of nudes with Wilson as the model. One of the first photographs he took of her, on the balcony of their home, became one of his most published images (Nude (Charis, Santa Monica)). Soon after they took the first of several trips to Oceano Dunes, not far from Santa Monica. It was there that Weston made some of his most daring and intimate photographs of any of his models, capturing Wilson in completely uninhibited poses in the sand dunes. He exhibited only one or two of this series in his lifetime, thinking several of the others were "too erotic"^[45] for the general public.

Although his recent work had received critical acclaim, he was not earning enough income from his artistic images to provide a steady income. Rather than going back to relying solely on portraiture, he started the “Edward Weston Print of the Month Club”, offering selections of his photos for a monthly $5 subscription. Each month subscribers would receive a new print from Weston, with a limited edition of 40 copies of each print. Although he created these prints with the same high standards that he did for his exhibition prints, it is thought that he never had more than eleven subscribers.^[44]

At the suggestion of Beaumont Newhall, Weston decided to apply for a Guggenheim Foundation grant (now known as a Guggenheim Fellowship). He wrote a two-sentence description about his work, assembled thirty-five of his favorites prints, and sent it in.^[46] Afterward Dorothea Lange and her husband suggested that the application was too brief to be seriously considered, and Weston resubmitted it with a four-page letter and work plan. He did not mention that Wilson had written the new application for him.^[47]

On March 22, 1937, Weston received notification that he had been awarded a Guggenheim grant, the first ever given to a photographer.^[48] The award was $2,000 for one year, a significant amount of money at that time. He was able to further capitalize on the award by arranging to provide the editor of AAA Westway Magazine with 8-10 photos per month for $50 during their travels, with Wilson getting an additional $15 monthly for photo captions and short narratives. They purchased a new car and set out on Weston's dream trip to go and photograph whatever he wanted. Over the next twelve months they made seventeen trips and covered 16,697 miles according to Wilson's detailed log. Weston made 1,260 negatives during the trip.

The freedom of this trip with the "love of his life", combined with all of his sons now reaching the age of adulthood, gave Weston the motivation to finally divorce his wife. They had been living apart for sixteen years.^[49]

Due to the success of the past year, Weston applied for and received a second year of Guggenheim support. Although he wanted to do some additional traveling, he intended to use most of the money to allow him to print his past year's work. He commissioned Neil to build a small home in the Carmel Highlands on property owned by Wilson's father. They named the place "Wildcat Hill" because of the many domestic cats that soon occupied the grounds.

Wilson set up a writing studio in what was intended to be a small garage behind the house, and she spent several months writing and editing stories from their travels.

In 1939, Seeing California with Edward Weston was published, with photographs by Weston and writing by Wilson. Finally relieved from the financial stresses of the past and inordinately happy with his work and his relationship, Weston married Wilson in a small ceremony on April 24.

Buoyed by the success of their first book, in 1940 they published California and the West. The first edition, featuring 96 of Weston's photos with text by Wilson, sold for $3.95. Over the summer, Weston taught photography at the first Ansel Adams Workshop at Yosemite National Park.

Just as the Guggenheim money was running out, Weston was invited to illustrate a new edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. He would receive $1,000 for photographs and $500 travel expenses. Weston insisted on having artistic control of the images he would take and insisted that he would not be taking literal illustrations of Whitman's text. On May 28 he and Wilson began a trip that would cover 20,000 miles through 24 states; he took between 700 and 800 8x10 negatives as well as dozens of Graflex portraits.^[50]

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and the United States entered World War II. Weston was near the end of the Whitman trip, and he was deeply affected by the outbreak of the war. He wrote: "When the war broke out we scurried home. Charis did not want to scurry. I did."^[51]

He spent the first few months of 1942 organizing and printing the negatives from the Whitman trip. Of the hundred of images he took, forty-nine were selected for publication.

Due to the war, Point Lobos was closed to the public for several years. Weston continued to work on images centered on Wildcat Hill, including shots of the many cats that lived there. Weston treated them with the same serious intent that he applied to all of his other subjects, and Charis assembled the results into their most unusual publication, The Cats of Wildcat Hill, which was finally published in 1947.

The year 1945 marked the beginning of significant changes for Weston. He began to experience the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a debilitating ailment that gradually stole his strength and his ability to photograph. He withdrew from Wilson, who at the same time began to become more involved in local politics and the Carmel cultural scene. A strength that originally brought them together - her lack of interest in becoming a photographer herself - eventually led to their break-up. She wrote, "My flight from Edward was also partly an escape from photography, which had taken up so much room in my life for so many years."^[52]

While working on a major retrospective exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art, he and Wilson separated. Weston returned to Glendale since the land for their cabin at Wildcat Hill still belonged to Wilson's father. Within a few months she moved out and arranged to sell the property to him.

1946–58: Final years[link]

In February, 1946, Weston's major retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He and Beaumont Newhall selected 313 prints for the exhibition, and eventually 250 photographs were displayed along with 11 negatives. At that time many of his prints were still for sale, and he sold 97 prints from the exhibit at $25 per print. Later that year, Weston was asked by Dr. George L. Waters of Kodak to produce 8 × 10 Kodachrome transparencies for their advertising campaign. Weston had never worked in color before, primarily because he had no means of developing or printing the more complicated color process. He accepted their offer in no small part because they offered him $250 per image, the highest amount he would be paid for any single work in his lifetime.^[53] He eventually sold seven color works to Kodak of landscapes and scenery at Point Lobos and nearby Monterey harbor.

By late 1948 he was no longer physically able to use his large view camera. That year he took his last photographs, at Point Lobos. His final negative was an image he called, "Rocks and Pebbles, 1948". Although diminished in his capacity, Weston never stopped being a photographer. He worked with his sons and others to catalog his images and especially to oversee the publication and printing of his work. In 1950 there was a major retrospective of his work at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris, and in 1952 he published a Fiftieth Anniversary portfolio, with images printed by Brett.

During this time he worked with Cole, Brett, and Brett's wife Dody Warren to select and have them print a master set of what he considered his best work. They spent many long hours together in the darkroom, and by 1956 they had produced what Weston called “The Project Prints,” eight sets of 8” × 10” prints from 830 of his negatives. The only complete set today is housed at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Later that same year the Smithsonian Institution displayed nearly 100 of these prints at a major exhibit, “The World of Edward Weston”, paying tribute to his accomplishments in American photography.

Weston died at his home on Wildcat Hill on New Year’s Day, 1958. His sons scattered his ashes into the Pacific Ocean at an area then known as Pebbly Beach on Point Lobos. Due to Weston's significant influence in the area, the beach was later renamed Weston Beach. He had $300 in his bank account at the time of his death.^[54]

Legacy[link]

Two of Weston's photographs, a nude taken in 1925 and a shell taken in 1927, are among the most expensive photographs ever sold as of 2010.

Cameras and techniques[link]

During his lifetime Weston worked with several cameras.

• 8 × 10 Seneca folding-bed view camera with one of several lenses: a Graf Variable, Wollensak Verito or Rapid Rectilinear^[55]
• 8 × 10 Universal view camera with either a triple convertible Turner Reich or a 19" Protar
• 4 × 5 view camera, type unknown.
• 3¼ × 4¼ Graflex with a ƒ/4.5 Tessar lens^[55][56]

Film and Paper

Prior to 1921 Weston used an orthochromatic sheet film, but after panchromatic film became widely available in 1921 he switched to it exclusively. Notations he made about his exposures indicate that the film he used would be rated approximately equivalent to 16 on the today's ISO scale.^[57] This necessitated very long exposures when using his view camera, ranging from 1 to 3 seconds for outdoor landscape exposures to as long as 4½ hours for still lifes such his peppers or shells.^[58]

The 8 × 10 he preferred was large and heavy, and due to its weight and the cost of the film he never carried more than twelve sheet film holders with him. At the end of each day, he had to go into a darkroom, unload the film holders and load them with new film. This was especially challenging when he was traveling since he had to find a darkened room somewhere or else set up a makeshift darkroom made from heavy canvas.^[59]

In spite of the bulky size of the view camera, Weston boasted he could "set up the tripod, fasten the camera securely to it, attach the lens to the camera, open the shutter, study the image on the ground lass, focus it, close the shutter, insert the plate holder, cock the shutter, set it to the appropriate aperture and speed, remove the slide from the plate holder, make the exposure, replace the slide, and remove the plate holder in two minutes and twenty seconds."^[59]

He printed on several kinds of paper. Initially he used standard silver gelatin paper for his portraits and other early photos, but in Mexico he learned how to use platinum and palladium paper that was imported from England.^[55]

After his return to California, he abandoned platinum and palladium printing due to the scarcity and price of the paper. Eventually he was able to get most of the same qualities he preferred with regular chloro-bromide papers.

Weston always made contact prints, meaning that the print was exactly the same size as the negative. This was essential for the platinum printing that he preferred, since at that time the platinum papers required ultra-violet light to activate.

When he wanted a print that was larger than the original negative size, he used an enlarger to create a larger inter-positive, then contact printed it to a new negative. The new larger negative was then used to make a print of that size.^[60]

Major Exhibitions[link]

In 1970, the Rencontres d'Arles festival (France) presented an exhibition "Hommage à Edward Weston" and an evening screening of the film "Weston the Photographer" by Willard Van Dyke.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Abbott, Brett. Edward Weston : Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005. ISBN 978-0-89236-809-9
• Bunnell, Peter C. Edward Weston on Photography. Salt Lake City : P. Smith Books, 1983. ISBN 0-87905-147-7
• Bunnell, Peter C., David Featherston et al. EW:100 : Centennial Essays in Honor of Edward Weston. Carmel, Calif. : Friends of Photography, 1986.
• Conger, Amy. Edward Weston in Mexico, 1923–1926. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8263-0665-9
• Conger, Amy (1992). Edward Weston - Photographs From the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography. Tucson: Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1992. ISBN 0-938262-21-1
• Conger, Amy. Edward Weston: The Form of The Nude. NY: Phaidon, 2006. ISBN 0-7148-4573-6
• Edward Weston : Color Photography. Tucson, Ariz. : Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1986. ISBN 0-938262-14-9
• Enyeart, James. Edward Weston’s California landscapes. Boston : Little, Brown, 1984.
• Foley, Kathy Kelsey. Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister. Dayton: Dayton Art Institute, 1978.
• Heyman, There Thau. Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography. Oakland: Oakland Art Museum, 1992.
• Higgins, Gary. Truth, Myth and Erasure : Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. Tempe, Ariz. : School of Art, Arizona State University, 1991.
• Hochberg, Judith and Michael P. Mattis. Edward Weston: Life Work. Photographs from the Collection of Judith G. Hochberg and Michael P. Mattis. Revere, Pa. : Lodima Press,c2003. ISBN 1-888899-09-3
• Hooks, Margaret. Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary. London: Pandora, 1993.
• Lowe, Sarah M. Tina Modotti and Edward Weston the Mexico Years. London: Merrell, 2004. ISBN 1-85894-245-4
• Maddow, Ben. Edward Weston: Fifty Years; The Definitive Volume of His Photographic Work. Millerton, N.Y., Aperture, 1973. ISBN 0-912334-38-X 0912334398
• Mora, Gilles (ed.). Edward Weston : Forms of Passion. NY: Abrams, 1995. ISBN 0-8109-3979-7
• Morgan, Susan. Portraits / Edward Weston. NY: Aperture, 1995. ISBN 0-89381-605-1
• Newhall, Beaumont (1984). Edward Weston Omnibus : A Critical Anthology. Salt Lake City : Peregrine Smith Books, 1984. ISBN 0-87905-131-0
• Newhall, Beaumont . Supreme Instants: The Photography of Edward Weston. Boston : Little, Brown, 1986. ISBN 0-8212-1621-X
• Newhall, Nancy (ed.). Edward Weston; The Flame of Recognition: His Photographs Accompanied by Excerpts from the Daybooks & Letters. NY: Aperture, 1971.
• Pitts, Terence. Edward Weston 1866–1958. Köln: Taschen, 1999. ISBN 978-3-8228-7180-5
• Stebins, Theodore E., Karen Quinn and Leslie Furth. Edward Weston : Photography and Modernism. Boston : Museum of Fine Arts, 1999. ISBN 0-8212-2588-X
• Stebins, Theodore E. Weston’s Westons : Portraits and Nudes. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1989. ISBN 0-87846-317-8
• Travis, David. Edward Weston, The Last Years in Carmel. Chicago : Art Institute, 2001. ISBN 0-86559-192-X
• Warren, Beth Gates. Edward Weston's Gifts to His Sister and Other Photographs. NY: Sotheby's, 2008.
• Warren, Beth Gates (2001). Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston: A Passionate Collaboration. NY: Norton, 2001. ISBN 0-393-04157-3
• Watts, Jennifer A. (ed.). Edward Weston : A Legacy. London : Merrell, 2003. ISBN 1-85894-206-3
• Weston, Edward (1964). The Daybooks of Edward Weston, edited by Nancy Nehall. NY: Horizon Press, 1961–1964. 2 vols.
• Weston, Edward. My Camera on Point Lobos; 30 Photographs and Excerpts from E. W.’s Daybook. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
• Weston, Paulette. Laughing Eyes: a Book of Letters Between Edward and Cole Weston 1923–1946. Carmel: Carmel Publishing Co., 1999. ISBN 1-886312-09-5
• Wilson, Charis. Edward Weston Nudes : His Photographs Accompanied by Excerpts from the Daybooks & Letters. NY : Aperture, 1977. ISBN 0-89381-020-7
• Wilson, Charis. Through Another Lens : My Years with Edward Weston. NY:Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. ISBN 086547521
• Woods, John. Dune: Edward & Brett Weston. Kalispell, MT: Wild Horse Island Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9677321-2-3

External links[link]

• A brief biography from the Getty Museum
• edward-weston.com
• Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
• kimweston.com
• carawestonphotography.com
• Edward Weston's portfolio (138 photos)
• Peppers and Nudes: The Photographer Edward Weston
• A Gallery for Fine Photography
• Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston & Charis Wilson
• All Edward Weston Images Online Center for Creative Photography (CCP) CCP at the University of Arizona has released a digital catalog of all Weston's images.
• Edward Weston: The Photographer (1948 movie) @ weusefilm

Helen Charis Wilson (May 5, 1914 - November 20, 2009), most widely known as a subject of Edward Weston's photographs, was a model and writer.

Early life[link]

Wilson was born in San Francisco, the daughter of Harry Leon Wilson and Helen Charis Cooke Wilson. Her father wrote popular fiction, including the bestselling novel Ruggles of Red Gap, which was later made into a movie. Income from his writing provided a relatively high standard of living for the time, and in 1910 he built a 12-room house near Carmel, California. Two years later, when he was 45, he married Cooke, who grew up in Carmel. She was 16.^[1]

Their first child, Leon, was born in 1913 and was followed a year later by their daughter, whom they named after her mother. Wilson dropped her first name as a young girl and became known as Charis (pronounced /ˈkɛərɨs/), which means 'Grace' in Greek. Her family's relative wealth and status provided her with a leisurely childhood, and she spent many of her summers swimming at the beach at Carmel and often sunbathing without a swim suit. She developed a reputation at school as a boisterous free-thinker for doing such things as starting a "self-control" club in grade school in which initiates had to lie in a tub filled with frigid water.^[1] Her behavior led to her being expelled from the private Branson School in the eighth grade, and she spent the next two years at the Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon.

During this time her parents separated, and from then she was cared for primarily by her grandmother and her great aunt, who were both writers and part of the literary scene of San Francisco. She returned to Carmel and finished high school with her brother. While still in high school she met the famous art collectors Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, who lived nearby. She visited their home often and was captivated by their substantial collection of modern paintings and sculptures. Walter Arensberg encouraged her by asking for her opinions about art and by engaging her in word play and intellectual puzzles and conundrums. She said later that Arensberg was entirely responsible for her art education.^[2]

Her parents divorced when she was 12, and although she was still in school she rarely saw either one of them. She often stayed with her grandmother or great aunt. According to Wilson, Ruth Catlin, founder of the Catlin Gabel School, came to see her and convinced her that she was too bright to stay in Carmel.^[1] The two determined she should go back to the Catlin Gabel School to complete her senior year and then go on to Sarah Lawrence College. Her father approved of her returning to Portland to finish high school, but although she won a full scholarship to Sarah Lawrence he refused to allow her to go.^[2]

With no other course available to her Wilson went back and forth between San Francisco and Carmel, enrolling in and then dropping out of secretarial school. Due to her father's lack of belief in her, her self-esteem plummeted. She moved into the attic of a painter friend and had a series of love affairs that led to an unwanted pregnancy. Her mother arranged for an abortion, which led her "to resolve on chastity as a new way of life." ^[1] She wrote that for a while she was driven by "a kind of angry despair…[and was] aware even at the time that I was in bad shape and moving toward worse." ^[1] It was then that her life changed.

Her years with Weston[link]

Weston wrote that at a concert in December 1933 or January 1934 he saw "this tall, beautiful girl, with fine proportioned body, intelligent face, well-freckled, blue eyes, golden brown hair to shoulders – and had to meet."^[3] Her brother, Leon, who had met Weston while Wilson was in Portland, introduced the two. Wilson said, "For anyone interested in statistics – I wasn't – he was 48 years old and I had just turned 20. What was important to me was the sight of someone who quite evidently was twice as alive as anyone else in the room, and whose eyes most likely saw twice as much as anyone else's did."^[4]

At the time Weston was married, but his wife, Flora Chandler Weston, was living in Los Angeles. In Carmel, Weston was sharing his home with Sonya Noskowiak, a photographer in her own right but also Weston's model and lover. Wilson stopped by Weston's studio a few days later, only to find that Weston had gone to Los Angeles on business. Noskowiak welcomed her, brought out many of Weston's prints for viewing and asked if she would be interested in modeling for Weston. On April 22, 1934, Wilson posed for the first of what would be hundreds of photographs, both nude and clothed.

After the second modeling session, Weston wrote in his daybooks, "a new love come into my life … one which, I believe, will stand the test of time."^[3] Posing for Weston elevated Wilson's feelings for him far beyond her initial ardor. She wrote, "During photographic sessions, Edward made a model feel totally aware of herself. It was beyond exhibitionism or narcissism, it was more like a state of induced hypnosis, or of meditation." ^[4] She became completely enamored of Weston, and he of her. Within a few months time they were lovers. Noskowiak, who was still living with Weston at the time, seemed to be aware of their relationship but might have tolerated it in the hopes that it would not last.

After the initial modeling sessions Weston became completely captivated by Wilson. He made 31 photographs of her nude form in 1934 alone, each laboriously visualized and captured with his 4 X 5 Graflex camera, then hand developed and printed in his small darkroom.^[5] For the next two years she was his exclusive model.

In mid-1935 Weston moved to Los Angeles for a project funded by the Works Progress Administration, and he asked Wilson to live with him there. His youngest sons, Neil and Cole, alternately lived with them and with their mother. His older sons, Brett and Chandler (who were also a few years older than Wilson), had opened a photography studio in the area, and Weston used it as a base of operations for his project.

During this same period Weston switched from a 4 X 5 camera to an 8 X 10 view camera.^[6] Using the larger camera he made a series of nudes of Wilson, beginning with an iconic study of her in the doorway of their home (Nude (Charis, Santa Monica)). Later, he made his most graphic photos of her at Oceano Dunes, which was then a isolated area of massive sand dunes. Wilson said she found the place "magical" and had no trouble shedding any last semblances of inhibition that might have remained. She recalled that Weston was concentrating on photographing the landscape, when she took off her clothes and rolled down the sand dunes. He immediately focused his camera on her, capturing both the spontaneity of her freedom and her unabashedly sensual form.^[1] These photos, which are some of Weston's most recognized images, "mark the climax of Weston's quest for a modern figurative style."^[5]

In 1937 Weston applied for and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the first ever award to a photographer. Wilson authored the application, a four-page narrative, signed by Weston.^[7] The Fellowship provided a stipend of $2,000, and with it they began traveling around the West. Together they traveled 16,697 miles in 187 days.

At the end of the year Weston finally divorced his wife, Flora, after 16 years of separation.

The following year the Guggenheim Fellowship was renewed, and Weston and Wilson settled down to printing and cataloging much of his work. They moved to a new home on Wildcat Hill near Carmel, where in a separate building Wilson finally had a place of her own to write. She began a narrative of her travels with Weston, which was published the next year as Seeing California with Edward Weston.

On April 24, 1939, Wilson and Weston were married in Elk, California. Soon after she began writing the text for their next and perhaps most famous book, California and the West, which was published in 1940. In 1941 Weston was asked to take photos for a new edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Once again Wilson and Weston traveled around the country while he took photographs for the Whitman book.

It was during this trip that Wilson and Weston had begun to drift apart. He continued to be fascinated with younger women and he devoted more and more time to his photography at the expense of their relationship. Wilson, in turn, was growing tired of putting his interests first. She wanted to write more, and she wanted to connect with other people.

She became involved in documenting labor struggles in Northern California, and during her research she met a labor activist named Noel Harris. The two became romantically involved, and Wilson decided it was finally time to break from Weston. On December 13, 1946, she filed divorce papers. Weston waived his right to object, and he casually wrote to Beaumont Newhall, "Charis is in Reno getting a divorce. Cole in L.A. getting new Chevrolet."^[1]

Later life[link]

Just one day after her divorce from Weston was finalized, Wilson married Harris. They had two daughters, one of whom was murdered in Scotland in 1967. That same year Harris and Wilson divorced. She moved to Santa Cruz and lived close to her other daughter Rachel Fern Harris for the rest of her life.

After the separation from Weston, Wilson was occupied among others as a union secretary and creative writing teacher.^[8] In 1977 Wilson wrote the introduction for a book of photographs, Edward Weston Nudes, which is now sought after by collectors. In 2007 she was the subject of a documentary, Eloquent Nude. Her memoir, Through Another Lens, written with Wendy Madar, was published in 1999.

At the time of her death she and her daughter, Rachel, were staying at the home of poet Joseph Stroud.^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson
• Weston Family History – Charis Wilson Weston

Ansel Adams
Born	Ansel Easton Adams (1902-02-20)February 20, 1902 San Francisco, California, United States
Died	April 22, 1984(1984-04-22) (aged 82) Monterey, California
Nationality	American
Education	homeschooling, grammar school
Occupation	Photographer and Conservationist
Influenced by	Paul Strand, Edward Weston
Spouse	Virginia Rose Best
Children	Michael, Anne
Parents	Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray Adams
Website
http://www.anseladams.org http://www.anseladams.com

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park.

With Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs and the work of those to whom he taught the system. Adams primarily used large-format cameras despite their size, weight, setup time, and film cost, because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images.

Adams founded the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston. Adams's photographs are reproduced on calendars, posters, and in books, making his photographs widely distributed.

Life[link]

Childhood[link]

Adams was born in the Western Addition of San Francisco, California, to distinctly upper-class parents Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray Adams. He was an only child and was named after his uncle Ansel Easton. His mother's family came from Baltimore and his maternal grandfather had a successful freight-hauling business, but squandered his wealth in failed mining and real estate ventures in Nevada.^[1] The Adams family came from New England, having migrated from the north of Ireland in the early 18th century. His grandfather founded and built a prosperous lumber business, which his father later ran, though his father's natural talents lay more with sciences than with business. Later in life, Adams would condemn that very same industry for cutting down many of the great redwood forests.^[2]

In 1903, his family moved two miles west to a new home near the Seacliff neighborhood, just south of the Presidio Army Base.^[3] The home had a "splendid view" of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands.^[4] San Francisco was devastated by the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Uninjured in the initial shaking, the four-year-old Ansel Adams was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an aftershock three hours later, breaking his nose. Among his earliest memories was watching the smoke from the ensuing fire that destroyed much of the city a few miles to the east. Although a doctor recommended that his nose be re-set once he reached maturity,^[5] this was never done; as a result, Adams's nose remained crooked for his entire life.^[6]

Adams was a hyperactive child and prone to frequent sickness and hypochondria. He had few friends, but his family home and surroundings on the heights facing the Golden Gate provided ample childhood activities. Although he had no patience for games or sports, the curious child took to nature at an early age, collecting bugs and exploring Lobos Creek all the way to Baker Beach and the sea cliffs leading to Lands End,^{[4] [7]} "San Francisco's wildest and rockiest coast, a place strewn with shipwrecks and rife with landslides."^[8]

His father bought a three-inch telescope and they enthusiastically shared the hobby of amateur astronomy, visiting the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton together. His father went on to serve as the paid secretary-treasurer of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific from 1925 to 1950.^[9]

After the death of Ansel's grandfather and the aftermath of the Panic of 1907, his father's business suffered great financial losses. By 1912, the family's standard of living had dropped sharply.^[10] After young Ansel was dismissed from several private schools for his restlessness and inattentiveness, his father decided to pull him out of school in 1915, at the age of 12. Adams was then educated by private tutors, his Aunt Mary, and by his father. His Aunt Mary was a follower of Robert G. Ingersoll, a 19th-century agnostic, abolitionist and women's suffrage advocate. As a result of his aunt's influence, Ingersoll's teachings were important to Ansel's upbringing.^[11] During the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, his father insisted that, as part of his education, Adams spend part of each day studying the exhibits.^[12] After a while, Adams resumed and then completed his formal education by attending the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School, until he graduated from eighth grade on June 8, 1917. In his later years, he displayed his diploma in the guest bathroom of his home.^[13]

His father raised him to follow the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson: to live a modest, moral life guided by a social responsibility to man and to nature.^[11] Adams had a warm, loving and supportive relationship with his father, but had a distant relationship with his mother, who did not approve of his interest in photography.^[14]

Youth[link]

Adams taught himself piano at age twelve. Music became the main focus of his later youth. Possessing an eidetic memory, he quickly learned to read music and play the piano. Soon he was taking lessons, and the ardent pursuit of music became his substitute for formal schooling. One of his childhood tutors was composer Henry Cowell.^[15] For the next dozen years, the piano was Adams's primary occupation and, by 1920, his intended profession. Although he ultimately gave up music for photography, the piano brought substance, discipline, and structure to his frustrating and erratic youth. Moreover, the careful training and exacting craft required of a musician profoundly informed his visual artistry, as well as his influential writings and teachings on photography.

Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family.^[16] He wrote of his first view of the valley: "the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious... One wonder after another descended upon us... There was light everywhere... A new era began for me." His father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera, during that stay and he took his first photographs with his "usual hyperactive enthusiasm".^[17] He returned to Yosemite on his own the following year with better cameras and a tripod. In the winter, he learned basic darkroom technique working part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher.^[18] Adams avidly read photography magazines, attended camera club meetings, and went to photography and art exhibits. With retired geologist and amateur ornithologist Francis Holman, whom he called "Uncle Frank," he explored the High Sierra, in summer and winter, developing the stamina and skill needed to photograph at high elevation and under difficult weather conditions.^[19]

Close-up of leaves In Glacier National Park (1942)

While in Yosemite, he had frequent contact with the Best family, owners of Best's Studio, who allowed him to practice on their old square piano. In 1928, Ansel Adams married Virginia Best in Best's Studio in Yosemite Valley. Virginia inherited the studio from her artist father on his death in 1935, and the Adams continued to operate the studio until 1971. The studio, now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery, remains in the hands of the Adams family.

At age 17, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to preserving the natural world's wonders and resources, and he was hired as the summer caretaker of the Sierra Club visitor center in Yosemite Valley, the LeConte Memorial Lodge from 1920 to 1924.^[20] He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did his wife. He was first elected to the Sierra Club's board of directors in 1934, and served on the board for 37 years, until 1971.^[6] Adams participated in the club's annual High Trips, and was later responsible for several first ascents in the Sierra Nevada.

During 1919, he contracted the Spanish Flu during the 1918 flu pandemic. Adams fell seriously ill but recovered after several months to resume his outdoor life.

During his twenties, most of his friends came from musical connections, particularly violinist and amateur photographer Cedric Wright, who became his best friend as well as his philosophical and cultural mentor. Their shared philosophy came from Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy, a literary work which espoused the pursuit of beauty in life and art. Carpenter was an English socialist philosopher and gay activist. For several years, Adams carried a pocket edition with him while at Yosemite.^[21] It soon became his personal philosophy as well, as Adams later stated, "I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate."^[22] He decided that the purpose of his art from now on, whether photography or music, was to reveal that beauty to others and to inspire them to the same calling.

In summer, Adams would enjoy a life of hiking, camping, and photographing, and the rest of the year he worked to improve his piano playing, expanding his piano technique and musical expression. He also gave piano lessons for extra income, finally affording a grand piano suitable to his musical ambitions.^[23] An early student was mountaineer and fellow Sierra Club leader Jules Eichorn.

His first photographs were published in 1921 and Best's Studio began selling his Yosemite prints the following year. His early photos already showed careful composition and sensitivity to tonal balance. In letters and cards to family, he expressed his daring to climb to the best view points and brave the worst elements.^[24] At this point, however, Adams was still planning a career in music, even though his small hands, easily bruised by bravura playing, limited his repertoire to practiced works which benefited from his strengths of fine touch and excellent musicality.^[25] It took seven more years for Adams to finally concede that at best he might become a concert pianist of limited range, an accompanist, or a piano teacher.

In the mid-1920s, Adams experimented with soft-focus, etching, Bromoil Process, and other techniques of the pictorial photographers, such as Photo-Secession leader Alfred Stieglitz who strove to put photography on an equal artistic plane with painting by trying to mimic it. However, Adams steered clear of hand-coloring which was also popular at the time. Adams used a variety of lenses to get different effects, but eventually rejected pictorialism for a more realistic approach which relied more heavily on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship.^[26]

Career[link]

In 1927, Adams produced his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, in his new style, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, taken with his Korona view camera using glass plates and a dark red filter (to heighten the tonal contrasts). On that excursion, he had only one plate left and he "visualized" the effect of the blackened sky before risking the last shot. As he stated, "I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print".^[27] As he wrote confidently in April 1927, "My photographs have now reached a stage when they are worthy of the world's critical examination. I have suddenly come upon a new style which I believe will place my work equal to anything of its kind."^[28]

With the sponsorship and promotion of Albert Bender, an arts-connected businessman, Adams's first portfolio was a success (earning nearly $3,900) and soon he received commercial assignments to photograph the wealthy patrons who bought his portfolio.^[29] Adams also came to understand how important it was that his carefully crafted photos were reproduced to best effect. At Bender's invitation, he joined the prestigious Roxburghe Club, an association devoted to fine printing and high standards in book arts. He learned much about printing techniques, inks, design, and layout which he later applied to other projects.^[30] Unfortunately, at that time most of his darkroom work was still being done in the basement of his parents' home, and he was somewhat limited by barely adequate equipment.

After a cooling off period with Virginia Best during 1925–26, during which he had short-lasting relationships with various women, many of them students of colleague Cedric Wright, he married Virginia in 1928. The newlyweds moved in with his parents to save expenses. His marriage also marked the end of his serious attempt at a musical career, as well as her ambitions to be a classical singer.

Church, Taos Pueblo (1942)

Between 1929 and 1942, Adams's work matured and he became more established. In the course of his 60-year career, the 1930s were a particularly productive and experimental time. Adams expanded his works, focusing on detailed close-ups as well as large forms from mountains to factories.^[31] In 1930 Taos Pueblo, Adams's first book, was published with text by writer Mary Hunter Austin. In New Mexico, he was introduced to notables from Stieglitz's circle, including painter Georgia O'Keeffe, artist John Marin, and photographer Paul Strand, all of whom created famous works during their stays in the Southwest. Adams's talkative, high-spirited nature combined with his excellent piano playing made him a hit within his enlarging circle of elite artist friends.^[32] Strand especially proved influential, sharing secrets of his technique with Adams, and finally convincing Adams to pursue photography with all his talent and energy. One of Strand's suggestions which Adams immediately adopted was to use glossy paper rather than matte to intensify tonal values.

Through a friend with Washington connections, most likely Francis P. Farquhar, Adams was able to put on his first solo museum exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 1931, featuring 60 prints taken in the High Sierra. He received an excellent review from the Washington Post, "His photographs are like portraits of the giant peaks, which seem to be inhabited by mythical gods."^[33] Despite his success, Adams felt he was not yet up to the standards of Strand. He decided to broaden his subject matter to include still life and close-up photos, and to achieve higher quality by "visualizing" each image before taking it. He emphasized the use of small apertures and long exposures in natural light, which created sharp details with a wide range of focus, as demonstrated in Rose and Driftwood (1933), one of his finest still-life photographs.

In 1932, Adams had a group show at the M. H. de Young Museum with Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston and they soon formed Group f/64, which espoused "pure or straight photography" over pictorialism (f/64 being a very small aperture setting that gives great depth of field). The group's manifesto stated that "Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form."^[34] In reality, "pure photography" did borrow from some of the established principles of painting, especially compositional balance and perspective, and some manipulation of subject and effect. By these standards, not only were "soft focus" lenses prohibited but Adams's earlier photo Monolith, which used a strong red filter to create a black sky, would have been considered unacceptable.

Following Stieglitz's example, in 1933 Adams opened his own art and photography gallery in San Francisco which eventually became the Danysh Gallery after Adams's commitments grew too burdensome.^[35] Adams also began to publish essays in photography magazines and wrote his first instructional book Making a Photograph in 1935.^[36] During the summers, he often participated in Sierra Club outings, as a paid photographer for the group, and the rest of the year a core group of the Club members socialized regularly in San Francisco. During 1933, his first child Michael was born, followed by Anne two years later.^[37]

During the 1930s, many photographers including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans believed they had a social obligation to reveal the harsh times of the Depression through their art. Mostly resistant to the "art for life's sake" movement, Adams did begin in the 1930s to deploy his photographs in the cause of wilderness preservation. In part, he was inspired by the increasing desecration of Yosemite Valley by commercial development, including a pool hall, bowling alley, golf course, shops, and automobile traffic. He created a limited-edition book in 1938, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, as part of the Sierra Club's efforts to secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks. This book and his testimony before Congress played a vital role in the success of the effort, and Congress designated the area as a National Park in 1940.

Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters. At first the colossal aspect may dominate; then we perceive and respond to the delicate and persuasive complex of nature.

— Ansel Adams, The Portfolios Of Ansel Adams

In 1935, Adams created many new photos of the Sierra and one of his most famous photographs, Clearing Winter Storm, captured the entire valley just as a winter storm relented, leaving a fresh coat of snow. After courting Stieglitz for three years, Adams gathered his recent work and had a solo show at the Stieglitz gallery "An American Place" in New York in 1936. The exhibition proved successful with both the critics and the buying public, and earned Adams strong praise from the revered Stieglitz.^[38] During the balance of the 1930s, Adams took on many commercial assignments to supplement the income from the struggling Best's Studio. Until the 1970s, Adams was financially dependent on commercial projects. Some of his clients included Kodak, Fortune magazine, Pacific Gas and Electric, AT&T, and the American Trust Company. In 1939, he was named an editor of U.S. Camera, the most popular photography magazine at that time.^[39]

In 1940, Ansel put together A Pageant of Photography, the most important and largest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors.^[40] With his wife, Adams completed a children's book and the very successful Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley during 1940 and 1941. He also taught photography by giving workshops in Detroit and his pupils included future photographer Todd Webb.^[41] Adams also began his first serious stint of teaching in 1941 at the Art Center School of Los Angeles, which included the training of military photographers.^[42] In 1943, Adams had a camera platform mounted on his station wagon, to afford him a better vantage point over the immediate foreground and a better angle for expansive backgrounds. Most of his landscapes from that time forward were made from the roof of his car rather than from summits reached by rugged hiking, as in his earlier days.^[43]

On a trip in New Mexico weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Adams shot a scene of the Moon rising above a modest village with snow-covered mountains in the background, under a dominating black sky. The photograph is one of his most famous and is named Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. The photograph's fame was probably enhanced by Adams's description in his later books of how it was made: the light on the crosses in the foreground was rapidly fading, and he could not find his exposure meter; however, he remembered the luminance of the Moon, and used it to calculate the proper exposure.^[44][45][46] Adams's earlier account^[47] was less dramatic, stating simply that the photograph was made after sunset, with exposure determined using his Weston Master meter.^[48] However the exposure was actually determined, the foreground was underexposed, the highlights in the clouds were quite dense, and the negative proved difficult to print.^[49] The initial publication of Moonrise was in U.S. Camera 1943 annual, after being selected by the "photo judge" for U.S. Camera, Edward Steichen.^[50] This gave Moonrise an audience before its first formal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944.^[51] Over nearly 40 years, Adams re-interpreted the image, his most popular by far, using the latest darkroom equipment at his disposal, making over 1,300 unique prints, most in 16″ by 20″ format.^[52] Many of the prints were made in the 1970s, finally giving Adams financial independence from commercial projects. The total value of these original prints exceeds $25,000,000;^[53] the highest price paid for a single print reached $609,600 at Sotheby's New York auction in 2006.

Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park (1942)

In September 1941, Adams contracted^[54] with the Department of the Interior to make photographs of National Parks, Indian reservations, and other locations for use as mural-sized prints for decoration of the Department's new building. Part of his understanding with the Department was that he might also make photographs for his own use, using his own film and processing. Although Adams kept meticulous records of his travel and expenses,^[55] he was less disciplined about recording the dates of his images, and neglected to note the date of Moonrise, so it was not clear whether it belonged to Adams or to the U.S. Government. But the position of the moon allowed the image to eventually be dated from astronomical calculations, and it was determined that Moonrise was made on November 1, 1941,^[56] a day for which he had not billed the Department, so the image belonged to Adams. The same was not true for many of his other negatives, including The Tetons and the Snake River, which, having been made for the Mural Project, became the property of the U.S. Government.^[57]

When Edward Steichen formed his Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in early 1942, he wanted Adams to be a member, to build and direct a state-of-the-art darkroom and laboratory in Washington, D.C.^[58] In approximately February 1942, Steichen asked Adams to join.^[58] Adams agreed, with two conditions: He wanted to be commissioned as an officer, and he also told Steichen he would not be available until July 1.^[59] Steichen, who wanted the team assembled as quickly as possible, passed Adams by, and had his other photographers ready to go by early April.^[59]

Baton practice at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, 1943

Adams was distressed by the Japanese American Internment that occurred after the Pearl Harbor attack. He requested permission to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The resulting photo-essay first appeared in a Museum of Modern Art exhibit, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans. He also contributed to the war effort by doing many photographic assignments for the military, including making prints of secret Japanese installations in the Aleutians.^[60] Adams was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his career, the first in 1946 to photograph every National Park.^[61] This series of photographs produced memorable images of "Old Faithful Geyser", Grand Teton, and Mount McKinley.

In 1945, Adams was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Adams invited Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston to be guest lecturers and Minor White to be lead instructor.^[62] The photography department produced numerous notable photographers, including Philip Hyde, Benjamen Chinn, Charles Wong, Bill Heick, Ira Latour, Cameron McCauley, and Gerald Ratto.

In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, which was intended as a serious journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations. He was also a contributor to Arizona Highways, a photo-rich travel magazine which continues today. His article on Mission San Xavier del Bac, with text by longtime friend Nancy Newhall, was enlarged into a book published in 1954. This was the first of many collaborations with her.^[63] In June 1955, Adams began his annual workshops, teaching thousands of students until 1981.^[64]

By the 1950s, Adams came to believe that he was on the down side of his creative life. He continued with commercial assignments for another twenty years and became a consultant on a monthly retainer for Polaroid Corporation, founded by good friend Edwin Land.^[65] He made thousands of photographs with Polaroid products, El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise (1968) being the one he considered his most memorable. In the final twenty years of his life, the Hasselblad was his camera of choice, with Moon and Half Dome (1960) being his favorite photo made with that brand of camera.^[66]

Adams published his fourth portfolio, What Majestic Word, in 1963, and dedicated it to the memory of his Sierra Club friend Russell Varian,^[67] who was a co-inventor of the klystron and who had died in 1959. The title was taken from the poem "Sand Dunes," by John Varian, Russell's father,^[15] and the fifteen photographs were accompanied by the writings of both John and Russell Varian. Russell's widow, Dorothy, wrote the preface, and explained that the photographs were selected to serve as interpretations of the character of Russell Varian.^[67]

In the 1960s, a few mainstream art galleries (without a photographic emphasis) which originally would have considered photos unworthy of exhibit alongside fine paintings decided to show Adams's images – notably the Kenmore Gallery in Philadelphia.^{[68][citation needed]} In March 1963, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall accepted a commission from Clark Kerr, the President of the University of California, to produce a series of photographs of the University's campuses to commemorate its centennial celebration. The collection, titled Fiat Lux after the University's motto, was published in 1967 and now resides in the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside.

In 1974, Adams is guest of honour at the Rencontres d'Arles festival (France). An evening screening at the Arles's Théâtre Antique and an exhibition were presented. The festival celebrated the artist three more times after that: in 1976, 1982 and 1985 through screening and exhibition.

In 1974, Adams had a major retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Much of his time during the 1970s was spent curating and re-printing negatives from his vault, in part to satisfy the great demand of art museums which had finally created departments of photography and desired his iconic works. He also devoted his considerable writing skills and prestige to the cause of environmentalism, focusing particularly on the Big Sur coastline of California and the protection of Yosemite from over-use. President Jimmy Carter commissioned Adams to make the first official portrait of a president made by a photograph.^[69]

Work with Color Film[link]

Unknown to many, Adams did not work exclusively in black and white—he experimented with color, as well. A few examples of his color work are available in the online archive of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. His subjects that he shot in color ranged from portraits to landscape to architecture,^[70] a similar scope to that of his black and white work. There are two main reasons, according to an expert source, why Adams preferred black and white.

The first was that he felt color could be distracting, and could therefore divert an artist’s attention away from achieving his full potential when taking a photograph. Adams actually claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography”^[71] .

The second reason was that Adams was a “master of control”. He wrote books about technique, developed the “Zone System”—something which helped determine the optimal exposure and development time for a given photograph—and introduced the idea of “previsualization”, which involved the photographer imagining what he wanted his final print to look like before he even took the shot. These concepts and methods allowed for nearly total control of all the potential variables that factor into a final print. Because of his love for control, Adams disliked color since it lacked this element that he had mastered with black and white.

However, toward the end of his life, the expert source said, Adams admitted that he wished he had been able to better master the technique of controlling and manipulating color.

Contributions and influence[link]

Romantic landscape artists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran portrayed the Grand Canyon and Yosemite at the end of their reign, and were subsequently displaced by daredevil photographers Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and George Fiske.^[72] But it was Adams's black-and-white photographs of the West which became the foremost record of what many of the National Parks were like before tourism, and his persistent advocacy helped expand the National Park system. He skillfully used his works to promote many of the goals of the Sierra Club and of the nascent environmental movement, but always insisted that, as far as his photographs were concerned, "beauty comes first". His stirring images are still very popular in calendars, posters, and books.

Realistic about development and the subsequent loss of habitat, Adams advocated for balanced growth, but was pained by the ravages of "progress". He stated, "We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people… The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere."^[73]

The Tetons and the Snake River (1942)

Adams co-founded Group f/64 with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham. With Fred Archer, he pioneered the Zone System, a technique for translating perceived light into specific densities on negatives and paper, giving photographers better control over finished photographs. Adams also advocated the idea of visualization (which he often called "previsualization", though he later acknowledged that term to be a redundancy) whereby the final image is "seen" in the mind's eye before the photo is taken, toward the goal of achieving all together the aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual, and mechanical effects desired. He taught these and other techniques to thousands of amateur photographers through his publications and his workshops. His many books about photography, including the Morgan & Morgan Basic Photo Series (The Camera, The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, and Artificial Light Photography) have become classics in the field.

He was elected in 1966 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Adams's photograph The Tetons and the Snake River has the distinction of being one of the 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization. These photographs eloquently mirror his favorite saying, a Gaelic mantra, which states "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."^[74]

His lasting legacy includes helping to elevate photography to an art comparable with painting and music, and equally capable of expressing emotion and beauty. As he reminded his students, "It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium."^[75]

"Ansel Adams", wrote John Szarkowski (New York Museum of Modern Art), "attuned himself more precisely than any photographer before him to a visual understanding of the specific quality of the light that fell on a specific place at a specific moment. For Adams the natural landscape is not a fixed and solid sculpture but an insubstantial image, as transient as the light that continually redefines it. This sensibility to the specificity of light was the motive that forced Adams to develop his legendary photographic technique."^[76]

Death[link]

In September 1983, Adams was confined to his bed for four weeks after leg surgery to remove a tumor.^[77] Adams died on April 22, 1984, in the ICU at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at the age of 82 from a heart attack. He was survived by his wife, two children (Michael, born August 1933, and Anne, born 1935) and five grandchildren.

Publishing rights for most of Adams's photographs are now handled by the trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. An archive of Ansel Adams's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

John Szarkowski states in the introduction to Ansel Adams: Classic Images (1985, p. 5), "The love that Americans poured out for the work and person of Ansel Adams during his old age, and that they have continued to express with undiminished enthusiasm since his death, is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps even unparalleled in our country's response to a visual artist."

Awards[link]

Ansel Adams received a number of awards during his lifetime and posthumously, and there have been a few awards named for him.^[78]

Adams received a Doctor of Arts from both Harvard and Yale universities. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.^[79] He was awarded the Conservation Service Award by the Department of the Interior in 1968, a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980, the Sierra Club John Muir Award in 1963,^[80] and was inducted into the California Hall of Fame by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver in 2007.^[81]

The Minarets Wilderness in the Inyo National Forest and a 11,760-foot (3,580 m) peak therein were renamed the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Mount Ansel Adams respectively in 1985.

The Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography was established in 1971,^[80] and the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation was established in 1980 by The Wilderness Society.^[82]

Works[link]

Notable photographs[link]

• Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927.
• Rose and Driftwood, San Francisco, California, 1932.
• Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, 1937.
• Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1940.^[83]
• Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1960.
• Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
• Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1944.
• Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958.
• El Capitan, Winter Sunrise, 1968

Photographic books[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• The High Sierra: Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, 1927 (Jean Chambers Moore, Publisher)
• Sierra Nevada the John Muir Trail, 1938 (reprinted 2006 as ISBN 0-8212-5717-X).
• Born Free and Equal, 1944. ISBN 1-893343-05-7.
• Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, text from writings of John Muir, 1948.
• The Land of Little Rain, text by Mary Austin, 1950.
• This is the American Earth, with Nancy Newhall, 1960 (Sierra Club Books. (reprinted by Bulfinch, ISBN 0-8212-2182-5)
• These We Inherit: The Parklands of America, with Nancy Newhall, 1962.
• The Eloquent Light (unfinished biography of Adams by Nancy Newhall), 1963.
• "Yosemite Valley" 1967 (45 plates in B&W edited by Nancy Newhall, published by 5 Associates, Redwood City, California.
• Ansel Adams, 1972. ISBN 0-8212-0721-0.
• Polaroid Land Photography, 1978. ISBN 0-8212-0729-6.
• Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 1986. ISBN 0-8212-1629-5.
• Our Current National Parks, 1992.
• Ansel Adams: In Color, 1993. ISBN 0-8212-1980-4.
• Photographs of the Southwest, 1994. ISBN 0-8212-0699-0.
• The National Park Photographs, 1995. ISBN 0-89660-056-4.
• Yosemite, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2196-5.
• California, 1997. ISBN 0-8212-2369-0.
• America's Wilderness, 1997. ISBN 1-56138-744-4.
• Ansel Adams at 100, 2001. ISBN 0-8212-2515-4.
• Born Free and Equal, 2002. ISBN 1-893343-05-7.
• Ansel Adams: The National Park Service Photographs, 2005. ISBN 978-0-89660-056-0.
• Ansel Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places, 2005. ISBN 1-59764-069-7.
• Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, 2007. ISBN 978-0-316-11772-2.

Technical books[link]

• Making a Photograph, 1935.
• Camera and Lens: The Creative Approach, 1948. ISBN 0-8212-0716-4
• The Negative: Exposure and Development, 1949. ISBN 0-8212-0717-2
• The Print: Contact Printing and Enlarging, 1950. ISBN 0-8212-0718-0
• Natural Light Photography, 1952. ISBN 0-8212-0719-9
• Artificial Light Photography, 1956. ISBN 0-8212-0720-2
• Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, 1983. ISBN 0-8212-1750-X
• The Camera, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2184-1
• The Negative, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2186-8
• The Print, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2187-6

See also[link]

• Charles Hitchcock Adams, Ansel Adams's father, an amateur astronomer
• Allied Arts Guild, in Menlo Park, California, where Adams took commercial photographs of artists' work
• Zone System, a unique approach to film exposure and development invented by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in 1939–1940
• Nature photography
• San Francisco Art Institute

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adams, Ansel (1981). The Negative. Boston: Little Brown. ISBN 0-8212-1131-5. 
• Adams, Ansel (1985). Ansel Adams, an Autobiography. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-8212-1596-5. 
• Adams, Ansel (1989). Examples. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-8212-1750-X. 
• Alinder, Mary (1996). Ansel Adams: A Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-4116-8. 
• Alinder, Mary; Stillman, Andrea; Adams, Ansel; Stegner, Wallace (1988). Ansel Adams: Letters and Images 1916–1984. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-8212-1691-0. 
• Andrew Smith Gallery. "5 prints of "Moonrise", 1941–1975". Andrew Smith Gallery. http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/anseladams/arrington/. 
• Ansel Adams Gallery. "Biography". Ansel Adams Gallery. Archived from the original on January 3, 2010. http://web.archive.org/web/20100103081953/http://anseladams.com/content/ansel_info/anseladams_biography.html. 
• Artinfo (2006). "Ansel Adams at the Phoenix Art Museum". Artinfo. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/24185/ansel-adams-at-the-phoenix-art-museum/. Retrieved November 29, 2006. 
• California Museum (2007). "Adams inducted into California Hall of Fame". California Museum. http://www.californiamuseum.org/Exhibits/Hall-of-Fame/inductees.html. Retrieved April 16, 2008. 
• Callahan, Sean (1981). "Short Takes: Countdown to Moonrise". American Photographer (January 1981). 
• di Cicco, Dennis (1991). "Dating Ansel Adams' Moonrise". Sky & Telescope (November 1991). 
• Goldbloom, J. (1990). "Remembering the Kenmore" in Philly Art Walks. Fall 1990.
• Hammond, Anne (2002). Ansel Adams: divine performance. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09241-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=u4ZWk8_BM7IC. 
• Ilnytzky, Una (June 23, 2010). "Ansel Adams Yosemite photo fetches $722K in record-setting auction". http://www.csmonitor.com/From-the-news-wires/2010/0623/Ansel-Adams-Yosemite-photo-fetches-722K-in-record-setting-auction. 
• Maloney, T.J. (1942). U.S. Camera 1943 annual. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce. 
• Read, Michael (1993). Michael Read. ed. Ansel Adams, New light: Essays on His Legacy and Legend. San Francisco: The Friends of Photography. 
• Sierra Club. "Roster of Sierra Club Directors". Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org/history/officers/directors.pdf. Retrieved April 12, 2010. 
• Sierra Club (2008a). "Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club: About Ansel Adams". Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org/history/anseladams/. Retrieved February 26, 2010. 
• Sierra Club (2008b). "Award Winners". Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org/ansel_adams/awardwinners/. 
• Stillman, Andrea G. (2007). 400 Photographs. New York, New York: Little, Brown. pp. 12. ISBN 978-0-316-11772-2. 
• Szarkowski, John (1976). Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art. New York: N.Y. Graphic Society. 
• Vernacular Language North. "SF Bay Area Timeline: Modernism (1930–1960)". Vernacular Language North. http://www.verlang.com/sfbay0004ref_timeline_05.html. 
• Whittington, Geoff (January 24, 2010). "Ansel Adams' boyhood San Francisco house". San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, CA. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-24/real-estate/17835300_1_ansel-adams-bath-yosemite-national-park. Retrieved April 20, 2010. 
• Wilderness Society. "The Wilderness Society". http://www.wilderness.org/. 
• Wright, Peter; Armor, John (1988). The Mural Project. Santa Barbara: Reverie Press. ISBN 1-55824-162-0.