Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is probably the photographer that most people think of when you say “black and white”. He took beautiful photographs of landscapes, most famously in the American west. He created a complicated system of photographic exposure and development known as the Zone System. He wrote several influential texts about photography. I hate him.
Why? He does not play to the strengths of the photographic medium as it exists in the early 21st Century, and his persistence in the public mind overshadows many equally valid—in my view, arguably superior—types of photography. More bluntly, his kind of photography no longer really exists, yet still drives our expectations.
When I first started photographing things, I kept wondering why I couldn’t produce an image like Adam’s Moon and Half Dome. I was depressed and anxious; I thought the problem was me. But, over time, I realized that I would never take an Ansel Adams photograph, because I didn’t have his equipment, his outlook or his access to the mountains of the American Rockies—and that this was a good thing.
Adams practised large-format photography, in which you lug around an enormous camera with tripod, and carefully take photographs—generally in really good light—of motionless subjects. Then you fiddle obsessively with development of the 8 x 10 inch negatives and, ultimately, the finished prints, to ensure you have a wide tonal range. The results are large and detailed images, often stunning.
The 35 mm film camera or DSLR produces negatives much smaller than those of Adams’ large format camera, and so will not produce images of the same size and detail. As well, large format cameras use a flexible bellows to connect the lens to the camera body that houses the negative; this permits the photographer to adjust the lens plane in ways that give more flexibility over perspective and depth of field in the finished image.
In contrast, 35 mm film cameras and DSLRs feature portability, high shutter speed, and an ability to photograph in low light with high ISO speeds. DSLRs also permit photographers to preview their images in the field, and later print only a tiny fraction of the total. Thus, digital photography encourages experimentation, and the capture of chance events by sheer persistence. It is a sort of open-ended science project—your good images will often be mutant freaks, as opposed to the carefully groomed images of Adams.
Put another way, the proper aesthetic for modern photography is rock and roll (before it got fat and lazy), not classical. The epitome of modern photography is the image that is active but time-limited, that pins some event briefly in place, rather than the image that is passive and strives for the eternal. And I also think it is important for photography to have a sense of humour and to deal with the world that people inhabit, meaning the urban landscape as well as the natural one.
All of which stands in opposition to Adams, and his beautiful but sometimes sterile nature images.
And now, a confession. I would, of course, be ecstatic to have taken any of Ansel Adam’s images – particularly the one with the frosted trees (Oak Tree, Snowstorm), the white aspens (Aspens, Northern New Mexico) or the rose on the board (Rose and Driftwood). Just look at those images! He was a master. I would be unworthy to touch the muddy foot of his least-favourite tripod. But if I met him in the street I would poke him in the eye.
Posted: January 2012.
Post Script
What right do I have to make fun of Ansel Adams? I have the following answers:
1. This is a polemic, meaning an opinion piece deliberately intended to provoke thought and discussion. Lighten up, already!
2. You do not have to be a master to criticize one. For example, everyday readers have a right to express an opinion on a Shakespeare play or sonnet, even though they cannot write one.
3. I am no expert on Adams, but I’ve spent time looking at his photographs and reading about him. While I think some of his photographs are great, I’ve also been oddly ambivalent about many of them.
Post-Post Script
Writing this essay has given me a reason to read up further on Adams and his work. Here are some interesting facts about him:
1. Adams was trained as a classical pianist and aspired to a career in music before switching to professional photography in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Throughout his career as a photographer, he was a noted environmentalist and member of the Sierra Club. But he later said that his great photographs were not taken for environmental reasons, but simply because he loved the mountains.
2. In 1941, the U.S. Department of Interior commissioned Adams to create a mural for its Washington, D.C. office. Adams took photographs in parks in California, New Mexico, Arizona and other western states, before the mural was cancelled at the outbreak of World War II. These images are available from U.S. National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams/. Many of them are rougher looking than his famous images, but still show his compositional skills.
3. Adams was upset by the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and put together a book of text and photographs on the Manzanar Relocation Center in Inyo County, California. The book is available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/anseladams/aamborn.html. The same camp was documented by activist photographer Dorothea Lange, who criticized Adams for too soft an approach. Notwithstanding Lange’s comments, Adams was criticized by others for questioning the internment.