From the archives: Photographer Ansel Adams

when you finish a painting what you have there is Art when you compose a sonnet that's art when you play a Fugue on a flute that's R2 when you take a picture that's a snapshot unless of course your Ansel Adams here's Ed Bradley with a portrait of an artist yeah I think this is really hot stuff I don't think for one moment that this man is just your run-of-the-mill tourists making instant prints along the California coast at Point Lobos hello Adams and at 77 he is our most famous photographer he has spent 50 years capturing some of the most dramatic vistas of the American West what he saw and the way he captured it has made him a millionaire although dealers make far more from his work than he does after Decades of photographing in Yosemite the Sierras in the southwest and a lot of commercial photography to pay the bills for many of those years Ansel Adams is now hot stuff I call it the end syndrome the great Chris today I think the innocent we have to be in there has to be a cult has to be a way of doing things are you in now no I'm not in I'm out I hope I might and I suppose I meant it myself but you've got a show coming up oh I'm in the populace you're more successful uh financially than you ever have been in in life yeah but does that make you in that no not with the contemporary intellectual world this world of the peasant critic would I think I'm classified Norman Rockwell so majority of Photography especially the Eastern the urban types they call it landscape for that it's just a postcard they don't see I've been accused many times with me just sort of a Sublime postcard photographer Supply because the pictures of vegan postcards if Ansel Adams makes picture postcards he must have been commissioned by the almighty a major exhibition just opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and will tour other American cities there are 153 photographs some going back 50 years he knew something nobody else knew that has to do with the sense of that landscape and what it means and how it works by living in it by climbing these mountains you know by really sleeping under these Skies John sharkovsky is the Museum's curator of Photography to me the early work is so lyrical private intense later work Much More Much More public more dramatic more more willful this print reminds me a little bit about the Dylan Thomas poem to his father of a rage rage against the dying of the life movement I mean by the time you spent that many years at it I think you can it's proper to take a look more a riskier more willful stance toward your work toward the world there's no question now of his Fame and stature hundreds of people crowded into the Museum's Garden to welcome him to New York and hundreds more lined up at a Fifth Avenue bookstore to pay 75 dollars for his latest book and to have him sign it how's that okay your name is the most important but since somebody had to come up driving along the Pacific coast near his home Adam said you learned to live with Fame tooling out 54th Street New York great big tall black man fight his very fine face with broad grid so stopped and looked at me and his jaw fell and he walked over and extended both hands well I never thought I'd lived to see the day when I meet hope Gibson In the Flesh and I truly walked out I couldn't have a lot to tell him I had to stepson on Adams has a sense of real modesty he's good his work is the standard in landscape photography and part of his genius is working in the subdued light of his dark room he's been known to spend days working on one print from a negative he's printed for years what's more important for you the the exposure going out and and making the exposure or are coming in here and making the print well it's all part of the same thing you have a you have a visualization of the picture you want you see something and you say this is the image I want so then you exposed accordingly and you develop the negative accordion if you get that effect and then I have an old cliche with to say the negative like the composer score then printed the performance of the score so you can you don't do it the same every time you come very close or reasonably close to uh what we call a standard I mean feeling of this is very definitely what I wanted and I got it but the prince sound exactly alike several years ago the word went out to dealers and collectors put your orders in now because Ansel Adams is about to stop running except for museums and other non-profit collectors the response well for the last three years with a little time out for open heart surgery he's been trying to fill those orders as always working seven days a week I read somewhere that uh at a point when you were still considering the choice between your music I think you were a Pianist right yeah and the camera someone said to you don't don't give up the music that they said the camera can never can never capture the soul or Express what is in the soul cannot expect a human soul well camera might not but maybe the photographer could try see the rockets in the water those rocks are slightly heavy that's better a better balance that's pretty good but a little thin here and that's too thin if you begin to lose the feeling of the substance of The Rock so that I would say I wouldn't use that this this is how this is burned out so you discarded so I just discard that or throw away Extinction what do you do with your Rejects they are destroyed everybody's asking me oh don't throw it away even if it isn't good I'd like it but I can't let bad for himself you're a perfectionist now well you have to be yes I wish I'd been in the past but I wouldn't have so many ghosts training me around what do you mean by ghosts well I don't know lousy Prince to show up it was a while and have that out is there a lousy Ansel Adam Sprint yes I'm afraid there must be a great many of them you know when you do professional work and publicity work because I did many many years ago these things rise up to commit me you're embarrassed by any of that yeah exactly but most people are pretty good about it perhaps his most famous shot is Half Dome it was also a passage in his life and what was to become his art the only thing I can think of is to get a black sky and a deep Shadow and I had one last plate left and one other red filter didn't came out just like I visualize and hoped for and that was I said after the first time I really visualized and called the shop that this is the equivalent not of this scene but of what I saw and felt that was the first time the first conscious one when I really knew what I was going to get Ansel Adams is one of the fortunate people in our world he loves his work and he loves to work I guess I asked about a vacation he mentions a trip he took one Sunday afternoon that was his vacation he did talk of going soon to Alaska but of course the camera goes with him his work has been and still is exceptional he will leave us with a tremendous Legacy and he wants it put to use we have the center for Creative Photography set up and University of Arizona and Tucson and my babies are all going there and then one of the instructions with the what the negatives is that under proper supervision graduates to Serious graduate students can print from these natives because they can't and to sell anything that would be couldn't do that with an archive collection but why in the world give them a lot of negatives they can't touch and that happens all the time and see the sedated along the boxes and Trunks you can't put them can't do anything with them so what the student can think about and look at them but after all I remember those people like fresh cabal there and Haydn and earlier composers that work music for relatively primitive instruments and thinking about what happens in the next 10 20 years when you can take your electronic image from the Native translated directly from the native and I have sad thing is that I know at things they've never would dream of today any more than I even could think of a constant grand piano have you ever considered you what would be a proper Epitaph for Ansel Adams I think Alfred see this is epitaph he told me he wanted that's the ideal instead of Hilly's Alfred siglitz he lived For Better or For Worse but he's dead for good [Laughter] and that'll work for answers I think that's wonderful

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 44,966

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Id: IyT3YuY2V8c

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023