Ansel Adams

February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984

Early Life

• Born in San Francisco

• His paternal grandfather founded a prosperous

lumber business, which his father later ran

• Ansel Adams later hated the industry because

of the destruction of redwood forests

• Ansel and his father shared the hobby of

amateur Astronomy

About

• American photographer

and environmentalist

• He is best known for his

black and white

landscape photographs

of the American West

and Yosemite Park

Interest in Photography

• First visited Yosemite

National Park in 1916

– “A new era began for

me.”

• Joined the Sierra Club, a

group dedicated to

protecting the wild

• Founded the f/64 Group

• “Monolith, The Face of Half

Dome”, 1927

Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, 1927

Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, 1927

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1940

• Developed the

Zone System as a

way to determine

proper exposure

and adjust contrast

• Used large-format

cameras for high

resolution and

sharpness

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico

• New Mexico, 1941

• One of his most

famous

• Adams’ description

of how it was made

added to the fame

of the photograph

Awards and Honors

• Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative

Arts, 1946

• Sierra Club Join Muir Award, 1963

• Conservation Service Award, 1968

• Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1980

• Hasselblad Award, 1981

Exhibitions

• Smithsonian

Institution

• Stieglitz Gallery

• Guggenheim

• Museum of Modern Art

• Knoxville Museum of

Art

• Hong Kong Museum

• Napa’s Mumm Winery

for Changing Earth

• Norton Art Gallery

• Phoenix Art Museum

• Cincinnati Art Museum

• Etc, etc, etc…….

Some Quotes…• “You don’t wait, you stumble upon “Found Objects”

• “You have to be there on the right day and at the

right time”

• “Colored prints remind me of a piano that is a little

out of tune…I can sometimes hear music in my

photographs in a structural sense”

• “I like to use black and white photographs because

it gives me more control and I can see the image

more clearly”