Ansel Adams was 14 years old when he first visited the mountains. His solitude was just as important as visiting with friends. Rocks, snow, mountains, skies, and long views into remote valleys interested him.
His first trip to the high Sierra was during a family vacation in 1916. In the Sierra, just as in the Rockies, Cascades, and other mountain ranges, Adams felt the magic of the cool dawn wind and stood as he said, “on the high altars within the portals of the temple.”
Ansel Easton Adams was born February 20, 1902 in San Francisco to Irish immigrants. He did not do well in school and thought his life would be much better outdoors. He was a custodian at the headquarters of the Sierra Club at Yosemite National Park.
Adams was an American landscape photographer known for his black and white images of the American West.
He taught himself to play the piano, but photography had begun to take an ever greater hold on his imagination. He carried his camera equipment all over Yosemite and shot many fine photographs. At age 17, he joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to protecting the wild places of the earth. He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director as did his wife.
Through nature, Adams discovered the meaning and truth of his own soul. It was to the mountains he always returned. He achieved a magical union with beauty and was inspired, again and again, to pass that feeling on. His first camera was a Kodak #1 Box Brownie, in 1916, a gift from his father, Charles.
His first photographs were published in 1921. Those early photos showed careful composition and sensitivity to tonal balance. In letters to family he wrote of having dared to climb to the best viewpoints and to brave the worst elements.
Adams was a life-long advocate of environmental conservation. He was contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to take photographs of national parks. For his work and his persistent advocacy, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.
During Summers, he would enjoy a life of hiking, camping, and photography. During the remainder of the year he would work to improve his piano-playing. He stated that, “I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.”
He was a key advisor in establishing the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He co-founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Some of his commercial clients included Pacific Gas and Electric, AT&T, American Trust, Eastman-Kodak, and Hills Brothers Coffee.
A portfolio of the ancient Taos Pueblo was published in 1930 with an edition of 100 books. Each book sold for $75. By the mid-1980s, his Taos Pueblo books sold for more than $12,000.
Ansel and his photography group known as Group f/64…64 being the smallest aperture setting on a camera… defined pure photography as “possessing no qualities of technique, composition, or idea, derivative of any other art form.”
Ansel wed Virginia Rose Best in 1928 and they raised two children. He passed this life April 22,1984 in Monterey Calif.. His ashes were placed on the summit of Mount Ansel Adams in California’s Ansel Adams Wilderness area.