The Grand Canyon and the Southwest

112 Pages·2000·8.48 MB·English

by  Ansel Adams

I
GRAND CANYON
THE
AND THE SOUTHWEST
ADAMS
ANSEL
»
j
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2016 with funding from
in
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/grandcanyonsouthOOadam
GRAND CANYON
THE
AND THE SOUTHWEST

GRAND CANYON
THE
AND SOUTHWEST
THE
ADAMS
ANSEL
Edited by Andrea G. Stillman
Introduction by William A. Turnage
Brown and Company
Little,
BOSTON NEW YORK LONDON
• •
)
In 1976. Ansel Adams selected Little. Brown and Company as the Copyright © 2000 by the Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing
sole authorized publisher of his books, calendars, and posters. At Rights Trust
the same time, he established The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights
Trust in order to ensure the continuin’ and quality of his legacy— The facsimile letters reproduced on pages 88, 91-92, 95-96, 97, 99,
both artistic and environmental. 102, and 106 are reproduced courtesy of the Ansel Adams Archive,
Collection, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona,
As Ansel Adams himself wrote. “Perhaps the most important Tucson. Copyright © the Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing
characteristic of my work is what may be called print quality. It is Rights Trust.
verv important that the reproductions be as good as you can possi-
bly get them.” The authorized books, calendars, and posters pub- All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
lished by Little, Brown have been rigorously supervised by the any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
Trust to make certain that Adams’ exacting standards of quality information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
are maintained.
brief passages in a review.
Only such works published by Little, Brown and Company can be
considered authentic representations of the genius of Ansel Adams. First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Acknowledgments Adams, Ansel.
The Grand Canyon and the Southwest/Ansel Adams; edited
I would like to thank the many people who helped in the prepara- by Andrea G. Stillman and with an introduction by William A.
tion of this book: Dean Bornstein,Janet Swan Bush, Carolyn Turnage.
Cooper,Jessica CalzadaJablonski, PatrickJablonski, Sandra Klimt, p.cm.
Melissa Langen, Betty Power, Merriam Saunders, Martin Senn; ISBN 0-8212-2650-9 (pbk.
—
Leslie Calmes, Dianne Nilsen, and Marcia Tiede of the Center for I. Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984. 2. Grand Canyon (Ariz.) Picto-
—
Creative Photography; Laura Daroca, The Huntington Library; rial works. 3. Southwest, New Pictorial works. 4. Landscape
Karen E. Haas, The Lane Collection, Boston Museum of Fine photography —Arizona — Grand Canyon. 5. Landscape photog-
—
Arts; Virginia Heckert, Newhall Fellow, Musuem of Modern Art; raphy Southwest, New. I. Stillman, Andrea Gray. 11. Title.
Del Zogg, George Eastman House; and the Trustees ol The Ansel
F788 .A33 2000
Adams Publishing Rights Trust; John P. Schaefer, William A. 779'-3673'o92 — dc2i
Turnage, and David H. Vena.
-A. G. S. Frontispiece: Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941
Designed by Dean Bornstein
Digital photography and duotone separations by Martin Senn
Printed by Stamperia Valdonega
PRINTED IN ITALY
An
Introduction
Ansel Adams. The Grand Canyon. The Southwest. They commercial projects in the region. His archive was estab-
go together very well indeed. It is true, of course, that lished at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Appropri-
most of us think of Yosemite and the High Sierra when we ately, he bought his first Stetson — the western hat that
—
think of Ansel. But, in actual fact, he had yet another was to become his ubiquitous trademark for $6, on a
“home place,” another great love. It lay in the magnificent 1929 trip to New Mexico.
—
deserts and luminous mountains the Spanish towns and Ansel had trained, with infinite rigor, to be a concert
—
Indian pueblos of the American Southwest. Santa Fe pianist and, until he was twenty-five, had intended to
and Taos. The Sangre de Christo Mountains. Big Bend make the piano his career. Photography, at first a hobby
National Park. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Mon- and increasingly a passion, had primarily been pursued in
ument Valley and Canyon de Chelly. Death Valley and Yosemite and the High Sierra. It is difficult to be certain
Joshua Tree. Mission San Xavier del Bac. The ancient when the decision for photography began to dominate.
pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, and San Ildefonso. Mesa On the other hand, it is absolutely clear that his early ex-
— —
Verde National Park. Zion and Cedar Breaks. The Ghost periences in the Southwest played a if not the critical
Ranch and the Enchanted Mesa. These were his special role in his remarkably rapid emergence, in the 1930s, as an
places. He wrote, in a 1937 letter to Alfred Stieglitz, important American artist.
— Ansel’s full conversion to photography as a profession,
It is all very beautiful and magical here a quality which can-
indeed as a raison d’etre, was fostered by “a little man with
not be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun a mighty heart and a luminous spirit” — Albert Bender. A
bake it intoyou. The skies and the land are so enormous, and the
prosperous San Francisco insurance magnate, his real life
detail so precise and exquisite that whereveryou are you are iso-
was as a patron of arts and artists, and his influence on the
lated in a glowing world between the macro and the micro,
Bay Area’s still-nascent culture was to be significant and
where everything is sidewise under you and over you, and the
clocks stopped long ago.
—
The decisive, formative years of Ansel’s artistic life
—
from 1927 to 1931 were profoundly altered and influ-
New
enced by the people and places of northern Mexico.
Over more than fifty years, on literally dozens of trips, he
traveled innumerable miles to and through the Southwest.
He created five books on the region, including his first,
Taos Pueblo, and, in 1976, one of his favorites. Photographs
of the Southwest. The legendary Moonrise, Hernandez, New
Mexico (1941) is, beyond doubt, his most famous photo-
—
graph and one of the best-known images of the century. .Albert Bender, c. 1Q2S
He did some of his most successful photojournalistic and
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little Old World village nestles close to the hills. Adobe
— —
bells color beyond imagination and today, the heavens
are filled with clouds." Shaped as he was by the untram-
meled Sierran wilderness, Ansel was entranced by the
mystical New Mexican trinity: the magnificent landscape
of mountain and mesa, the fascinating marriage of Span-
ish and Indian cultures, and the exquisite architecture
of ancient lineage. But, perhaps most of all, he loved the
—
/ig/it that element of ultimate importance to a photog-
rapher. As he later wrote of his first morning in Santa Fe,
“All was diamond bright and clear, and I fell quickly under
Mary Austin, c. 1929 the spell of the astonishing New Mexican light."
Thanks to Albert Bender's magic and his own enthusi-
astic personality, aided and abetted by virtuoso skills at the
—
piano not to mention a fondness for alcohol-fueled par-
lasting. Ansel, perhaps his favorite protege, was a some- ties— Ansel was quickly accepted in the society of Santa
what awkward youth of twenty-four, still living at home Fe and Taos. John Marin, the painter whom both Stieglitz
with his elderly parents and maiden aunt when they met and Ansel so admired, related (in a 1945 interview):
in 1926. Under Albert's enthusiastic and imaginative wing — —
I was at Mabel’s in Taos Iguess it was around 1929 when in
Ansel flourished. Most important, he helped Ansel find his
came a tall, thin man with a big black beard. Laughing, stamp-
metier and gain essential self-confidence.
ing, making a noise. All the other people crowded around him.
In April 1927, Albert felt it was time for Ansel to experi-
Made even more noise. I said to myself, I don’t like this man. I
ence the artistic New World of Santa Fe and Taos. So off
wish he woidd go away. Then all the otherpeople hauled him to
they went in Albert's open touring car, mostly over dirt —
the piano and he sat down and struck one note. One note. And
—
roads, often washboard or worse twelve hundred long
even before he began to play, 1 knew I did not want him to go
and adventurous miles. Albert introduced Ansel to his
away. Anybody who could make a sound like that I wantedfor
many friends in the celebrated arts colony of northern
myfriend always.
New Mexico. In Santa Fe, Ansel met the formidable Mary
Austin, grande dame of the Western literati. Albert The significance of this assimilation into the artistic com-
promptly proposed collaboration on a book between munity of Santa Fe and Taos for Ansel's evolution cannot
Ansel and Austin! He then took Ansel up to Taos and Ma- be overstated. He became intimately involved with an ex-
—
bel Dodge Luhan, doyenne of American salonists. Austin traordinarily creative and empathetic — group of artists
and Luhan were to play vital roles in the next few critical and writers. He entered into vital lifelong friendships. He
years in Ansel's life. exchanged ideas and inspiration with, among others, the
He was immediately enchanted. From Taos, he wrote painter Georgia O'Keeffe (who was also the wife of the
his future wife, Virginia, “This is the most completely great Stieglitz), the photographer Paul Strand, the poet
beautiful place have ever seen. A marvelous snowy range (and partyist) Witter Bynner — as well as with Mary
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of mountains rises from a spacious emerald plain and this Austin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and their numerous other
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guests. The combined force of these remarkable people
—
and their intellectual intensity caused Ansel artistically,
as it were — to grow up almost overnight. He metamor-
phosed, in five short years, from a young, would-be con-
cert pianist and photographic amateur into one of
America’s most dynamic and articulate artists. San Fran-
cisco formed Ansel, the Yosemite Sierra first inspired him,
but it was New Mexico that brought him to fruition. As his
intimate friend and biographer Nancy Newhall so aptly
put it, “Taos and Santa Fe were his Rome and Paris.”
The initial project that came of Ansel’s already pas-
—
sionate love affair with the Southwest was Taos Pueblo
done, as Albert had suggested, in collaboration with Mary
Austin. She was an exacting colleague and mentor, but Georgia O’Keeffe sketching, 1937
Ansel was to learn her lessons well. He worked on Taos
Pueblo for the better part of two years, returning again and academic career, Ansel did not emerge as part of an obvi-
again to the pueblo to make photographs. The book was ous artistic tradition. Nonetheless, his photography had
truly handmade, a triumph of the bookmaker’s art. Crane broadly reflected the contemporary Pictorialist srvde.
and Company manufactured a special run of paper. Half Then, in August 1930, at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s, Ansel met
was reserved for the text, which was beautifully printed Paul Strand, one of the prominent members of the
with hand-set type by San Francisco’s renowned Grab- Stieglitz “circle.” Together, they viewed a large number of
horn Press. Ansel’s friend Will Dassonville photosensi- negatives Strand had made during his stay in New Mexico.
tized the remaining paper, and Ansel went into the Ansel later wrote, “For the first time I saw images reveal-
darkroom and personally made each print in the book (a ing a powerful perception and conviction. was turned
I
total of 1,300 individual photographic prints!). It was then from a quasi-pictorial approach to a far more precise and
exquisitely hand-bound in linen with a spine of Nigerian austere vision.” He added (in 1972) that “a great and en-
—
goatskin one hundred eight copies in all. Taos Pueblo was during light was turned on for me which persists until this
offered at the then exceptionally high price of $75 and, de- day. For the first time I could recognize what straight pho-
spite the depression, sold out in short order. Ironically, tography was. It was not a matter of imitation, but of rev-
Ansel’s first book— despite its success — was to be the last elation. Awareness came upon me like a spring flood. I
in the style of his early work. Indeed, just as he was com- began to understand and deeply admire the work of Ed-
pleting Taos Pueblo, he encountered an artist who was to ward Weston.” And, later still, “[Strand’s] photographs
fundamentally alter his vision of photography. were extraordinary. The wonderful, efficient space and the
Ansel was essentially self-educated. In his formative purity of his edges. It’s very trite to try and talk about it,
years there were few art schools and none for creative but these really excited me. arrived back in San Francisco
1
photography. In any event, he had floundered in tradi- all fired up. immediately went into the straight phase of
I
tional schools. (Probably dyslexic and hyperactive, he photography, using an 8-by-io camera and getting sharp
was largely taught at home.) As a result of this unusual negatives, getting the pure photographic image.”
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commercial photographer and photojournalist. In this
role he made many visits to the Southwest, particularly in
the 1940S and 1950s, working for a diversity of clients. His
assignments came from, among others, Eastman Kodak,
US. Potash Company, Arizona Highways, Time, and Life, as
well as from the Interior Department. In pursuit of these
projects — and on Guggenheim Fellowships — he traveled
repeatedly across the Southwest, from Big Bend National
Park in Texas to Death Valley in California, from southern
Utah and Colorado to the Mexican border. It would be
difficult to imagine that many Americans, between 1927
and 1961, drove more miles on the bad and back roads of
the Southwest than Ansel Adams — and doubtful that any
Adams packing the car before a trip to the Southwest, with his
son, Michael, and Cedric Wright, 1941 (by Virginia Adams) American expressed a visual resonance with the region as
deeply convincing.
As time went by, Ansel often expanded his explanation From the very beginning of his involvement in the
of the imipact of seeing Strand’s work to credit the experi- Southwest, Ansel understood that the wondrous mix of
ence for his decision against music and in favor of photog- cultures, Spanish and Indian, with the largely unspoiled
raphy. His contemporary correspondence does not bear landscape was evanescent. In his autobiography he wrote.
this out. Neither does a third-person statement either
While the Southwest natural scene has always seemed beautiful
written or carefully edited by him (c.1932):
and inviting, the human experience has often been otherwise
Was trained as a musician. The camera, however, had always as I glimpsed vistas of the surge of its history. What I experi-
interested him, and in 1927 he finally relinquished the piano and enced in the 192J-1946 years was a time of pause between two
—
gavefull attention to photography. It is interesting to note that periods of exploitation the Spanish Conquest of the past and
—
hisfirst work was definitely pictorial; while he seldom manipu- the Anglo conqitest of the future when the human puigeant
lated his negatives and prints, his compositions were more in the was in quiet suspense and the natural character and integrity of
style of cotiservative painting, his conceptions slightly tinged by the land was temporarily secure.
romanticism, and his prints revealed his pleasure in textured pa-
Unlike the Yosemite Sierra, which, quite literally, had
pers and impressively expensive presentations. It was not until
been made world-famous by nineteenth-century photog-
19J1 that the veil of relative inessentials was torn away, and the —
raphers particularly Carleton Watkins and Eadweard
emergence of a pure photographic expression and technique was —
Muybridge the Southwest was largely unknown in vi-
revealed.
sual terms. In 1928, Ansel wrote in a letter, “Albert, have
I
Although Stieglitz and Weston were to be Ansel’s great a strong feeling that this land is offering me a tremendous
friends and, in many ways, his mentors, the artist who opportunity; no one has really photographed it.’’
most influenced his work was Paul Strand. Well Ansel did.
. . .
Despite his growing fame as an artist, Ansel had to
William A. Turnage
make his living as a teacher, writer, and, especially, as a
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