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classic images of a timeless place

Renowned photographer Ansel Adams found inspiration in the Yosemite Valley.
By Nicola Shipway

Given that photography is the subject of two main features in this May issue of Oman Today (see pages 18 and 30), it is fitting to note that Yosemite National Park has, in fact, long been associated with one of the great American photographers of the twentieth century. Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is best known for his compelling, black-and-white images of the Yosemite Valley, a landscape that beguiled him from the moment of his first visit in 1916, and which contributed to his lifelong devotion to environmentalist causes.

Adams was born in San Francisco into relative wealth, the grandson of a successful timber baron. The family lost its money in 1907, however, and Adams’s father, a businessman, spent the rest of his life attempting to restore this fortune. The event in Adams’s childhood most commonly recounted occurred in the previous year: an aftershock of the great earthquake of 1906 threw over the four-year-old, causing him to break his nose badly. His face bore the mark for the rest of his life.

A diffident, solitary child without siblings, Adams took pleasure in the wildlife surrounding him. When he was 12, he taught himself to play the piano; in fact, by the age of 18 he intended to play professionally. Ultimately, however, photography became his raison d’être. His first camera was a Kodak box brownie, a present from his parents, and he used it to capture the majestic landscape of the Yosemite. In 1919, he joined the Sierra Club as custodian of the Club’s LeConte Memorial Lodge. He became the club’s official trip photographer, and the publication of his images in the Sierra Club Bulletin helped to set him on the path of professional success. Later, he was to be elected to the club’s board of directors, a position he maintained for 37 years.

Adams met his future wife, Virginia, in Yosemite in 1921; they were married several years later. His career began to blossom in the latter half of the decade, particularly under the patronage of Albert Bender, and his photographs increasingly formed the subject of exhibitions; in 1931, for example, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC held a solo exhibition of his pictures, Pictorial Photographs of the Sierra Nevada Mountains by Ansel Adams.

A technically virtuoso photographer, Adams invented the esoteric ‘zone system’, which is a means of controlling the tonal range in the negative. He found inspiration among other contemporary photographers who became friends – titans including Edward Weston, with whom he helped to found Group f/64, which sought to define photography as a pure art form rather than something derived from other art forms; and Alfred Stieglitz.

Adams’s intensely romantic images of Yosemite, as well as those depicting the Californian coast and other areas of wilderness across the American West, were widely admired by the American public. He was a prominent figure, producing a number of books, including one aimed at children: Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley (1941), written by Virginia Adams and illustrated with Ansel’s photographs, is a story about the Adams children and the place the family loved.

In addition to promoting the appreciation of photography – he helped to found the photography department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first such department in a museum – Adams worked in support of environmental causes with tireless enthusiasm. It was an apt tribute, then, that in 1984, the US Congress established the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area, between Yosemite National Park and the John Muir Wilderness Area. In the year after his death, in 1985, Mount Ansel Adams, on the southeast boundary of Yosemite National Park, was named after him.