Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,History & Criticism
Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography Details
From Publishers Weekly Ansel Adams (1902-1984) created some of the most influential photographs ever made; he was one of this century's leading exponents of environmental values. Writer and scholar Spaulding casts a broad net in this fine biography; it is a well-rounded portrait of the man, an analysis of his work and an exploration of the development of photography as a fine art. As a youth, Adams had rigorous piano training that proved invaluable in his career, giving him intensely developed work habits and an insatiable quest for technical excellence. Spaulding follows Adams through his meeting with Alfred Steiglitz and his early shows, his collaboration with Mary Austin and Georgia O'Keeffe, his long friendship with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (she collaborated with him on later books) and his deep involvement with the Sierra Club. A final, fitting tribute came a year after his death when a peak in Yosemite was officially named Mount Ansel Adams. Photos. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Library Journal It seems that every third family in America has an Ansel Adams (1902-84) poster on the wall, images that were difficult to make but easy to love. Adams's images portray a romanticized and unspoiled Western American landscape omitting track houses, immigrant laborers, open-pit mines, timber clear-cutting, and traffic jams created by recreational vehicles in our national parks. As a member of the purist f/64 group, he applied considerable technical knowledge to portray the beauty of simple, ordinary things, and he has had incalculable influence on the public's appreciation of such otherworldly concepts as our need for solitude, the sacredness of untouched wilderness, and the fragility of nature. This is not the first book examining Adams's life and the evolution of his aesthetics, but it does provide significant discussion of his family life, his conflicts with David Brower's increasingly aggressive Sierra Club, Adams's propaganda work for the war-time federal government, and his photography of the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar. Overall, independent scholar Spaulding has presented a highly readable account of Adams's life, including thorough notes and an excellent bibliography. Recommended for photography collections.?Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, BrooklynCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
Jonathan Spaulding's biography of Ansel Adams (or AA as people referred to him) provides a counterpoint to Mary Street Alinder's. While Alinder shows us Adams the Man first, with the influence of the American West and the Environmental Movement in a supporting role, these forces are prominent in Spaulding's work.This is not to say that Spaulding does not talk about AA's private life, a pre-requisite for any biography, but does so only as it relates to AA's pursuit of photography and environmental causes. Absent, for example, are details of his relationship with his wife Virginia (which was quite complex: someone needs to write a biography of Virgina Best Adams in a way that Stacy Schiff wrote of Vera Nabokov) and the hard relationship with his children.What Spaulding gives us instead is a very detailed account of the evolution of Adams' photographic vision and technique, and the influence of the American West on it. Through this you find his relationship to other important photographers and their influence on him and his styles: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, and many others. We also see the influence of Western expansion throughout the first half of the 20th century, especially after WWII. In particular the seeming incongruity of AA producing pictures drawing people to the Western national parks while campaigning with the Sierra Club to limit the impact of tourists on Nature is discussed. The battle, falling out, and eventual reconciliation between Adams and David Brower is also detailedIf you are most interested in AA's life, read his autobiography or Alinder's biographry. If you want to know more about his influences and those things that he influenced, Spaulding's book is an excellent and readable choice. The book is heavily footnoted, with over 80 pages of notes, and contains a useful bibliography for anyone wishing to research further Adams' very interesting life.As a footnote, the book does not include any pictures whose copyright is held by the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, which refused to grant permission.