Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man

you that's Ansel sitting on a rock with his first camera his box brownie Kodak box brownie and he got some pretty good pictures with his codex box brownie he's wearing his pork pie hat he's on a vacation in Yosemite with his family he badgered them unmercifully and insisted that they go to Yosemite because he'd read a book about it in the heart of the Sierras and what was what of course captured his imagination was that it talked about Indians and cowboys and I mean it was kind of fantasy but so he he his parents were much older and I don't I don't they usually took vacations to visit the family up in California or down Southern California so this was different but and this was the first summer that he went to Yosemite so he was it was 1916 so he was 14 years old and he returned there every single year until year even the year he died 1984 no he didn't go back in 84 all the way up until 1983 he went back to you somebody every single year and for a while he even lived there full-time in the valley here's one of the first cameras he made first pictures he made with that camera and it's when he got home he was just taking snapshots what he liked to say was he was making a visual diary what I do I take pictures of all the people that came to my house for dinner I was on vacation with and put him in a scrapbook and it's really a diary I'm not telling you how I felt at the time I'm just showing you who was there with me well Ansel at this point he's just showing you where he went to and witness it's the subject is half to home but the trees are right in the middle of Half Dome and he when he got home from this trip to Yosemite his father helped him make a scrapbook and so when I was black this is the conservationists night paper conservationists nightmare it's that black those old black sheets in commercial albums that are so acid and they pasted the little pictures on that of course were made that the photo finishers and the Ansel didn't make these prints and then his father this is his father's writing and his father's very first picture in the album and so they got a little white from white lines out here to set it off and Ansel's handwriting was so bad that he wouldn't have been able to write if he wrote it you wouldn't be able to read it here's another page from the scrapbook and so you can see El Capitan and Half Dome run through his work all the way up to the end of his life and so they're here in this very first album of his very first pictures which is interesting and the pictures are not uh not remarkable but then what can you expect so but then at a certain point when he's about this is taken in 1927 starting about 1921 he starts realizing that he wants to do or even before that he wants to tell you not only where he was but what he felt about what he was looking at so instead of a visual diary he's giving you some unexpressive an expression of trying to put you right back there in his footsteps and so here's something he made in 1927 called milestone mountain he thought this picture was just absolutely fantastic I think it is just hideous it is so so kind of ersatz romantic and but he made lots of prints of this and at that point most of the prints he made were little for starters he was his darkroom was the his bathroom and you know also paper was expensive and and he was working with little tiny negatives and so but he made even some prints this big kind of on textured textured paper because that was the days when you were trying to make your photographic look like anything except a photograph which means you wanted to look like a drawing and etching a charcoal study you know something other than a photograph so there's 1927 but look at what he did in 1925 two years earlier he's only 23 when he makes this picture this is a really I think spectacular photograph and it's as good now as it was when he took it in 1923 they have pointed someone pointed out to me is it a little out of focus in the lower right corner well not this not the slide there's something but but I think it's just he gives you this feeling that you're there and this wonderful reflection the lake and these gorgeous clouds now part of the ability to put the clouds in there is that he's no longer using once a college you know that stuff where it's uh what's the name of the word word but the plate where the plates won't pan chromatic he's still using what's the one before panchromatic orthochromatic so but now he's whipped every now and then on his trips he'd take both kinds orthochromatic and pan kromagg the pan chromatic you could get the clouds because it would register blue and green and bread and everything in the orthochromatic was cheaper but it didn't register everything so so he'd come back from the same trip and some pictures would have white skies those were the ortho ortho chromatic and the pan chromatic would have clouds so it was funny all of a sudden going through his work you see you know before and after and here's what he looks like at the time then this is taken in 1927 in Tuolumne meadows and it was always referred to as the basque sheep herder see the cop that's his sierra club cup that everybody in the sierra club has your metal cup that you used to drink from the streams because the streams are so clear and if you could drink the water you can get gay Ardea and and see his high-top basketball shoes he absolutely thought that boots were a total waste of time and he believed that these high-top basketball shoes were just absolutely the greatest and always wore them and he just looks obviously he's this is on one of the sierra club trips and he's so he's so dirty looking and funny-looking so then I want to talk to you about April 10th 1927 a day in April 10th 1927 when he was 25 years old he always wanted to take one particular photograph from the diving board that's a slab of rock granite that sticks out right in front of Half Dome so you can look up at Half Dome but in order to get to the slab of rock it was a such a long hike that I even 30 years ago wouldn't have been able to get there and they set out he his wife Virginia Charlie Michael Cedric right and I think one other person and they set off to hike up there but it's April ordinarily in April of snows gone oh very deep snow you'll see there's a little film that will play here that'll show you so that so that the going is very heavy he's carrying a really heavy wooden tripod and he's carrying his you know five by seven camera and he's got Ratan glass plates because that's what glass plates that's it and so they set off carrying all this equipment his wife's got a movie camera that's why we have a movie and on his way up he takes a few pictures so here's a nice one this is a mount Clark and he would say he's climbed Mount Clark and numerable times and it's one of his favorite favorite spots this is another picture he took on the way up is this the little thing that shows you oh I was trying to see the woman out there on the on the point see the little figure that's Virginia they're not even married yet she was the only person that was willing to climb out here it's a 3,000 foot drop to the floor of Yosemite Valley and that's another picture so now that's another picture that he's taken so now when he gets up there this is the photograph he wanted to take so this is you're looking at Half Dome from the from the extreme side and Virginia was out somehow I don't know about I'm not ever sure she wasn't on that point because because but it's off to your left there and he knew when he got there that he wanted to make this impressive photograph this particular angle not not head-on now when he stood there this is what he saw through the camera see how light the sky is and the rock cliff is impressive but it's kind of like it was not that I'm not that exciting then and he started out with his k2 yellow filter that's the one that had the light sky then and he stood there looking at it he thought this isn't going to give them the idea the drama and the mystery and the majesty that I'm feeling standing here what do I need to do I I'll change the filter so he puts on his Ratan F deep red number 29 filter and in May 1925 he'd purchased it this is 1927 so it's two years later and he wrote Virginia I have purchased a red filter it will give a black sky and the snow Peaks set again set the sky will produce a startling effect so he puts it on and this is so he improves the photograph for those of you who are I'm not a photographer but the exposure was five seconds at f-22 and he was using his rat and pan chromatic glass plate so this is what he called his first visualization in other words when he stood there with the camera he visualized what he was going to hand you to look at once he was home and so he's taking an enormous leap instead of I mean I just walk out there and kind of point the camera and click I'm not but of course I'm not trying to take a picture to show you this is Ansel playing the piano that's ansel right there you Virginia was the photographer she had a movie camera and so she was the person who's making making that movie and that when they show you somebody with view camera set up at the end that's not Ansel or a view camera that's another guy that was on the trip and then what answer was playing was the Prelude in C from Bach's well-tempered clavier he had he had to make a choice he was he was spending his winters in San Francisco where the family lived studying studying piano and his career was to give piano lessons to kids in the neighborhood and of course you know I think was 12 cents a lesson or something he was still living at home and he he realized that that that his career would be limited and so but his photography seemed to have unlimited potential because and he so he pursued photography in the summer so you some of the photography San Francisco music so he decided that he would focus on photography but the music was always very important to him and he claimed that it was his his his the hours that he spent drilling exercises on the piano because he sounds like a Nazi was his first teacher where you just had to work on striking the note and releasing striking than for hours and hours before you could even play anything just weeks and weeks before he was even allowed to play a scale but he claimed that that stick-to-itiveness and that discipline is what made him become disciplined in photographer because he says when you pick up the camera you can't have to you you you shouldn't have to think about anything technical it should be like the piano is that the keys are at your disposal you just play them with the camera the same thing if you have to stop and think then you're not going to be able to well I don't know how far you're going to get but the I you it needs to be you you have to be it has to be intuitive in other words and so he was intuitive because he works so hard at it and when I say worked hard at it he exhaustive notes and experiments and and you know his exposure records in the zone system and the my gosh on and on and on so he was such a brilliant person he could have been a scientist but he ended up being a photographer so now man we get the next book to come on oh there's Virginia with the camera now this isn't her making that film this is subsequently but she was the person the family that had the had the camera I love this picture if when I was working for Ansel the work when we found this at one point Ansel died and I was went back to Carmel and work was working for his trust and Virginia came into the big work room and she said oh I found some home movies and I said oh well let's look so we rented a projector and we and we looked through all home movies of and the Ansel's kids little little kids look an answer wasn't in a lot of these movies because he was really pretty and absent parent busy out photographing but there were wonderful old pictures of the car when he and Virginia get in it and drive away after they got married in Yosemite is the snow and people throwing rice and and things that you just would never see before and it's a certain point we came across this film and I said oh my god that's the film of when he took my how about that so we got it copied for all the family all the grandchildren and at the same time I said Virginia did Ansel ever use the camera well yes I think he did a little and even before she said that we got to one film which which isn't in here that looks like a series of Ansel Adams photographs it's water in a little creek a snow leaves grass moving and there Ansel Adams photographs scene with a movie camera and I'm sure that that's footage is by Ansel that's and then that's when I asked her I said did Hansel ever use she said yeah I remember he he tried to but it just wasn't one him but I'm sure those are by him buried in his archive someone will look at them someday it was the Stockton's record did a this is the front page of the out-of-doors section that and they put the photograph now that's not an souls monolith see how light the sky is so that's not the famous one but there they've got Virginia sitting next to a tree here with the thing and then that's Cedric and somebody else with this camera looking out at the view but he was early on he was famous as a photographer in San Francisco and would have pictures you know on the front page of the set one of the ancillary sections with his pictures he was very well-known remember if I threw this in here because remember a few years ago there was this person named parson or Cicotte north-north Siegen yeah northagen and he claimed that he found in a thrift shop or in a garage sale all these negatives by Ansel Adams and he was going to print them and haven't have them for sale and it is all you have to do is take one look at Noor siegen's negatives glass plates and you know they're not by Ansel here's Ansel's version of this tree in Yosemite and there's no siegen's look look what he does look at the mess here on the left the clouds are kind of empty it this is this is a disaster here in the in the middle here the foreground look at Ansel's I mean if you you just take this is kind of an indifferent Ansel Adams photograph is already so much better than his so I was always mystified who the person was that said did these are by Ansel Adams because they obviously had never looked at anything before here's Ansel with his first 35 millimeter camera it's a like it was given to him by by who annoys his ice contacts excuse me is given to him by zod his ice and this is a photograph by Edward Weston and I just love Ansel's finger up like this Edward was the greatest photographer and see Ansel's beautiful fingers they're not distorted by arthritis yet and and see how balding he was and has ears stick out well this is 1936 so he's 34 years old he didn't get it he said bad things about 35 millimeter cameras and then he got one and he was so excited that he at one point he there's a quote where he says I just want to go I feel like I just want to go out and do nothing but photograph with this this is so exciting but he did say it's for life and people and so he he gets the camera and he almost immediately goes to the southwest to visit Georgia O'Keeffe and go on a trip with David McAlpin and a couple other people around the southwest so he takes his brand-new Zeiss and here he is this is what the cameras for people actively love O'Keefe in this is her old woody the way she'd go out and paint so she can go out and paint in her from her station wagon an Ansel would roam around and take photographs he and he also had a you know large format camera with him too and here's the group that went on the trip then O'Keefe there in the lower right corner even when I knew where she was wearing these it was not very attractive on the head there and Ansel's in the lower left corner that's a Dave McAlpin in the upper left and then on the far right is Godfrey Rockefeller who's Dave McAlpin's cousin that's the his wife Helen and so they're going to go off and there's a Wrangler with them too there's a picture of so here's what the Ansel s was so thrilled that O'Keefe was coming out to visit he worshiped O'Keefe in Stieglitz and Stieglitz of course will never unfortunately never came but Ansel was so excited about putting this trip together for them that he wrote Stieglitz I feel like a kid on Christmas morning because for him to be able to show the beautiful west to some New Yorkers was just he was so proud and so excited about it so this is a nineteen oh this is Maine's a little later this is 1942 this is the Canyon de Chelly from the Overlook and so this is the area that they went to the canyon de chelly and explored it down the side and here they are standing at the edge of the canyon de chelly and that's Ansel on the far right this picture is being taken by somebody else and there's I think that's Godfrey's kneeling down there taking a picture although with the backdrop and these are pictures that Ansel made of a Keef right around that right around that time but here's the picture that he made on the trip that is probably the most famous one his most famous portrait is this snapshot a Georgia O'Keeffe this is not Ansel's usual portrait Ansel's usual portrait is someone they joked about the fact they call in the great stone face and he did say at one point I photographed people as I would photograph rocks and I have to say Ansel took about five or six pictures of me and not a single one is hanging in my home because I look kind of like a rock and everyone I mean it's not just at your house you're having a bad hair day it they're just they're just not very attractive but this the moment was was now as he said and um O'Keefe was when I met her she was in her like 85 to 90 95 and she but she was still flirting we would sit at the dinner table of anthos house and I and Virginia and okay for the only women everyone else was men and she didn't address a single a line to Virginia or me she was only interested in the men I mean we didn't exist and I thought okay this is this is who so she was so alluring and she and kind of Anson were flirting but they weren't and she was always telling him oh you know you'll never catch up with me I'm eight years older and I'll always be older and and and so so he this mystique of O'Keefe in part because she was a great artist a but be because she was Alfred Stieglitz his wife and so was practically in a salami situation all the time so this is the guide Orville Wright who was I don't know you know taking care of the stuff as they went around this trip and she looks like she's flirting with him and when I was working for Ansel we got a letter from someone whose last name was Cox and she said My father was Orville Cox and I would like to have a picture of him with Georgia O'Keeffe and she wrote in this list she said my mother was so angry she tore the picture up the two cent I don't know whether O'Keefe was having an affair with Orville Cox right who knows what was going on but Ansel sent her a picture I thought that was really sweet now this is the one instance where unfortunately he had the 35-millimeter negatives strips hanging up on this rope in his in the room you don't clothesline with with clothespins and the one with there were two versions of this one is not as good because his his head is hit it's cut off at the top that his hat and it slipped out of the clothespin and fell on the floor and Ansel stepped on it and it went and right across the middle can you see how mushy that cloud is right next to or Orville Cox's button see that that's actually been airbrushed to take this picture because the the damage is so bad that you can't you can't really spot it with spot tone or whatever that stuff is they're always using it's very unsuccessful so so and he said wouldn't you know the best one on the what the roll was the one I stepped on at least he did it not somebody else so here's the here's the thing you can see they're two versions see a one where hit or Wilcox's I wish this were a light but it isn't Orville Cox's hat intersects O'Keefe so the he had just to look he was lucky he got one so now this is Alfred Stieglitz this is one of his this is a typical Ansel Adams portrait where it's almost like Stieglitz is a piece of sculpture and he's in front of it that was his favorite O'Keeffe painting called the something I forgotten was probably written down here but who cares and and it was this was taken in 1944 and this is this is the way Ansel's photographs his best portraits were very still very quiet beautifully lined up look at he he was very careful in fact I think this slide isn't quite right see how the thing along the top the frame of the thing looks a little wider on the right than the left he he had to he had to kind of Jimmy it around and I don't think this is quite right here because he wanted MIT to make sure everything was was perfectly aligned and see the stuff above I asked Ansel at one point I said well what is that on the wall there he said that's hair grease from Stieglitz's head I said well that's not so attractive anyway Ansel was just in love with Stieglitz and O'Keefe could do no wrong and so Ansel was so in love with an American place which was Stieglitz's gallery and he took all these photographs and his idea was that he would do a book eventually of the photographs but that never happened but here we are these are O'Keeffe paintings in the storeroom and then after the one trip in 37 when O'Keefe came to the southwest then she can't return in 1939 sheer bliss Ansel took them to the High Sierra his real as he called it it was his paradise so here they are it's the same cast of characters it's Dave McAlpin and Godfrey Rockefeller and Helen that's O'Keeffe on the far right looking mysterious in her black cloak and they they're they're cookies this is kind of a setup here and Ansel's taking the picture and see the little peak in the upper right-hand corner that's Ansel at some point pointed out that that someday would be Mount Ansel Adams's you can amount and can't assume your name until you die I think it's 12 12 months after your death so now it's my own Ansel Adams and in fact Ansel's ashes against the rules are scattered there by his his son took them up there let me tell you it's a real hike they had to go in the people that came in from the National Park ships have had the helicopter in the Sun and the other family members hiked in backpack I mean idiot it's very remote it's in the Ansel Adams wilderness and O'Keefe at one point he told O'Keefe in the bull you know he wasn't he didn't boast he said well utilize some day that'll bear my name and O'Keefe said oh now I see why you brought us here you just wanted to show us your mountain she could be so sarcastic I mean it was very funny but it was a great line and there's the mountain again this is a picture made a little earlier and this is the up up there way beyond swallowing matters but it gives you an idea of the high high sierra meadows and these beautiful beautiful peaks and so always when anybody would say well how do you like yellow Sonia say Oh God just a bunch of curios you preserve us all and they said well how do you like the Rockies oh my god no there's nothing interesting there well what do you like well I like the Sierra because they're sculptures in stone and surely not that is a little sculpture in stone and when you've seen the Sierra and you see it's so kind of small and manageable you get to the Rockies in these we're whaling you there's an so went to the Rockies to take some pictures for the government but you know it's kind of like how far would you have to get you have to get all the way to Kansas and you so it's very very hard and so it's particularly photogenic Yosemite and here's what here's the last picture he made of O'Keefe she didn't like this because it shows someone even she said it she didn't like it that well look at all those wrinkles he set this up out in front of his if this is right by his front door and she she's wearing a white handkerchief around her hair because she was pretty bald and that she's wearing her okay O'Keefe is a silver pin that Alexander Calder made her that she always wore at the necks of everything Atlanta black she always I never saw her anything cept black and white and Ansel took a little footstool out there and had her sit in a little footstool and he said his camera and said she was so she was always he made several pictures ever in late in life and she was very willing now here's Ansel in Yosemite uh with his 8 by 10 camp do you think that's a Dierdorf is there an expert here well because I can't by the time I got to Ansel's his big format cameras large format and even his box Brown he had already gone off to the George Eastman House so they weren't around to look at and Ansel never talked about I always have dear Doris we're like the equivalent of the rolls-royce he never talked about oh I love my dear door but so I don't know what he would actually what he used but but this this is a made up photograph this is his his one of his I think this might be his first camera platform he realized that if he had a platform he could get up and get better view his with the landscape so he had this put on there and his friend Nancy Newhall is taking this picture for publicity purposes so he's actually not photographing anything in this pictures just to set up but I think it's a really great picture it shows him I never asked him how the heck did you actually scramble up there because I it's it's harder than it looks I think to get your foot up and get up on that ladder I get up on that platform I don't know if he had I kind of asked his son if he had a ladder I wanted to talk to you about this photograph called winter sunrise Sierra Nevada near Lone Pine he used that camera the reason I showed you that picture he used that camera to take this this is the east side of the Sierra Yosemite is behind that Ridge way over we're in the valley the east side looking up at the Sierra and it's got these this beautiful snow now Ansel I want the reason I want to show you this picture is the negative was made in 1943 and he passed by this scene many times because he was he'd spent several weeks in 43 and 44 photographing it man's in our relocation center what camp where they had the Japanese people were interned and he it was his way to help in the war movement to show that the Japanese people had conquered against all odds living in this barren windswept place with nothing and made the Desert Bloom etc etc and created a life for themselves and so as opposed to Dorothea Lange who went and made the pick made the people look bitterly unhappy and Ansel went and he was incapable of taking a depressing photograph so even if they hadn't been happy he would have figured out how to make it look attractive and happy but they'd also been there two or three years by then so but he so he knew this very very well this view and he knew what he wanted exactly he wanted the sunlit meadow he wanted the the near range of these lower hills black and then he wanted the white Sierra and then he wanted some darker gray sky with a few little clouds and he'd even tried this before a few years before oh well here first I'll show you here's the negative this is actually what the negative looks like just a straight print you can see that there he did some magic in the darkroom so here's this is this is this print was made about 1980 this is a print from about 1950 see how much lighter it is as in general things got darker as he aged this is a variant that he made earlier when he'd been there and he wrote he said you know I took this picture but I see I actually have to be there at dawn the light was not raking enough because the Sun was just too high so in fact he writes somewhere I knew I had to be there at dawn so this was made about 1937 and the the final negative is made in 1943 so he'd remember a spot and want to go back there and it even earlier this is about 1927 he made a picture the same idea the horizontal bands of tone so it wasn't something new he this was a very common in Ansel's picture what was uncommon in winter sunrise was that it had a horse now the horse was originally just a stump and he didn't know it was a horse he just thought it was a stump and then the horse turn so when he took the picture it was the horse he didn't set out to take a picture of a horse believe me that was just happenstance and in fact he didn't take pictures of animals there some deer here's what you know deer in Yosemite and this would have been for the assembly parking curry company to use as a publicity photograph but he just wasn't really interested in animals so I had a pet rabbit and he thought that was a total waste of time and they never had they had a cat I think but they never had a dog and then the other criticism is the people say Lance whenever Polk's puts people in his photographs he never photographs people well now he does but he did do portraits but of course they look kind of like rocks but he did a lot of commercial work this is another commercial photograph for the assembly park and curry company to use on something like a menu or a post card and it shows these two people you know underneath al Capitan but in general he didn't want people dotting the landscape he liked the landscape just plain for starters the landscape will hold still and doesn't move and you can change filters and you don't have to and you don't have to he'd have to these these models you had to hire them and you had to get them out there in the wilderness and he did a lot of her Kodak but it was not really a picnic now in this photograph the woman there unfortunately you can't see how beutel's she is that's the girl that he fell in love with and almost left Virginia with but he didn't and when I tell you that then people always say to me well did you have an affair with Ansel you did didn't you I say absolutely not I was 30 years old when I met him and he was what 75 72 and here here in fact I'm getting married at his house to his business manager Bill Turnage that's the guy with the glasses on the left and Ansel's the best man and umber was fairly unusual to get married at Ansel's house with Ansel was the best man now these I wanted to show you Ansel had a really you could tell from this picture he has a real sense of humor right you can just tell he's hamming it up there these are typical notes he never said dear Andrea I'd come in in the morning and on my chair would arrive and the house would be quiet there would be it would be absolutely silent no Virginia will be downstairs in her room or something and the darkroom door would be closed because Ansel would have been in the darkroom since 7:30 or 8:00 and I didn't get there till 9:00 so I I'd find the note lift on my chair and it was always be typed on a little three by five white card and he never said dear Andrew look here he is Alcibiades here is st. Anselm the Kurd and I'm always called something else and he's a real lorry wart the Xerox was left on might have caused a fire right and down here this bottom one says see I dated it subsequently he often drew these funny little things too he says pretty fair maiden guide died slaved to the hallowed sequence of producing images is everything listed on the sacred Scrolls part of my job was to put up a list every Monday morning with what you needed to print that week and that would depend on what orders were outstanding and so one day can you read this in the back or maybe you came from the front one day I'd left him this this message I used priority he loved rubber stamps so I used his priority stamp to really try and get his attention and I say print orders and the first priority I need what you must don't delay and we must not miss this deadline and this was pretty pretty pushy but we had a really great relationship you know an Ansel was really funny so I wanted to print clearing winter storm so here's what I find the next morning on my chair pursuant to your order I immediately took two transients in one shot of Jim Daniels he always had incredible typos thereupon I collected myself established a perspective on women's lib and then decided there was nothing I could do about it but follow orders according I think he means accordingly I have celebrated the rainstorm by instinct I think he means staying indoors and going through 18 sheets of paper of varying complexion and response and I believe I shall avoid execution at dawn because I have a good sample of prints to come tomorrow I shall do a tea that should be enough to end up with 39 just the 39 steps to arduously stumble up remember the movie 39 steps be but be rest assured I know terror when I see it your obedient servant Alfred Stieglitz and PS I just want to check you wanted the clearing dust storm near Yuma I mean I have a whole folder of these funny things from Ansel uh and just he had just such a wonderful sense of humor and sure enough he made a lot of clear here's what I wanted him to print now this was the first picture by Ansel that I really fell in love with I met him because he had a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974 in 1971 we started planning it and he came to meet us and we all fell in love with him because he's kind of like Santa Claus look in looks and in personality and then his the show arrived and I remember standing in the gallery looking at this picture and I had I mind even National Park was to drive by the Grand Canyon and look down right ah and to see the bears brown bears in Yellowstone I knew nothing about conservation or the environment so when I look at this to me was just gonna apocalyptic vision it's just so beautiful that's just God coming right down that of the top there and and I was just I just found it ecstatically beautiful and so here I am asking him to make a lot of presents so here he is inciting the eight by ten inch negative into his enlarger custom made by his friend in San Francisco here he is with showing you dodging and burning that it's you know there's the piece of paper on this big metal wall that moved on railroad ties so you'd go back and forward and he it was a big enough it was a wall like this so that he could make huge huge prints because he did wall you know murals etc etc and there is he's dodging and burning here oh yeah oh oh here is one of the here's a stir this is a this is a straight print when I know they've won I have a straight print kind of looks strange huh oh yeah that's a raw print see there's nothing in the sky and an amazing um and when I first went to work for Ansel I embarrassed to tell you this but I thought you just took the negative and there was the print and so I arrived and and Ansel says even even looking at the show on the wall the mat I thought oh he's in that great and I thought it was almost kind of like Kodak you just sent it off to the guy and he makes the print that comes back to you and answers has come into the darkroom here I want to show you the what I do and I'm thinking okay it's a beautiful day out the window the surf of the Pacific the pelicans the sea lions the sea otters the clouds buta we're going in the dark room we go in the dark room he closes the door once the doors close you can't leave and then there's this beeper going me me me counting for while you're counting you're dodging and burning and then the water is running and then there's this terrible some odor of these chemicals and there's this kind of red safe light on and I'm thinking this is really unpleasant and Ansel is so happy and he starts in dodging and burning this photograph and I can't leave and he gets 20 done it's very very boring and you're counting the whole time here you are with your piece of paper one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen the corners first it went on like that counting on and I thought for starters how does he remember this so now he is referring to something I'll show you what he's referring to Oh going through a couple of hold on he's referring to this this is his ballet this is this is what he's doing see he's going to - six seconds down here because he does I and minus two plus two plenty darkens that corner darkens that corner and then there's something in the middle here and then he wants the plus ten for the top because he's got to bring that white top down to get some information that there's kind of hardly anything there and but he doesn't really refer to this because at this point he knows it by heart now this one is dated there's a date up there isn't it yeah no no 1060 that's something that's that something Oh usually well usually there that he would put a date in it because then he would put this he would have to he knew kind of what the dodging and burning was going to be but every batch of paper was different in the older he got the worse the paper was and the harder it was just absolutely he would miss despair was he ever going to get this to look right because there was less and less silver on the sheets until finally there was no children which is plastic and so he would then fold up this it would be a piece of paper like this he'd fold it up and he put it in with the negative so the next time you went to print the negative six months from now he'd have his last notes now of course he'd have to go start all over again with doing the test strips we're all photographers right yeah I'm not well anyway he do these test strips and stuff ah I thought it was beyond boring but he just loved it he just loved it so so here's the straight print and here's look at the difference look at that sky I mean there's looks like there's nothing there it's just absolutely amazing and then the other thing is see how what did he see how these trees saket he wants to make sure you see the it's very subtle and the thing is it has to be done so that you don't see any lines and if you don't that's why the counting had to be so ended you wanted to do them all the same too and you had to be you if you paused at any one point you'd you'd have a mark and it would be visible at dodging burning would be visible so he was a past master at it but boy was he patient and and I would tell him what did he have to do that he said he had I'll do 80 of these really I mean it's just kind of absolutely unbelievable so and here he is at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 and there is a great big huge clearing winter snow on the left and on the right is the same view but in the summertime it co 70 valleys summer and he's got there his Stetson hat and he's wearing his bolo tie and he's just so good-looking and he was just he was so much fun anybody could approach him now the last photograph I want to talk to you about is moonrise he almost how many people know what moonrise Hernandez is without even seeing it a few hands it's the one with the moon you know over the graveyard and he almost didn't take it because he was been visiting O'Keefe and he was up the valley with O'Keefe and then he got in love he loves stumps spent hours and hours on this stuff and finally he says he gave up on the stump and no motor down and off on his left there's what he saw the moon rising over the Sun great nut to me this whole thing is so romantic and mysterious is the Sangre de Cristo Mountains right there you got me right there and then here's this town of Hernandez and this little graveyard and you've got these wonderful little clouds and the moon now notice how he set this up the moon is not in the middle it's to the left okay what appealed to him about this photograph was a the moon be the cot the white clouds there and see the white gravestones it was sunset the Sun was just about to drop down he's here he's driving along here the sun's going down over here and so out of the corner of his eye he sees these white gravestones his line was that he almost he always said this here I almost did the car he said and his son Michael was with him and he said yeah that's absolutely true and so he pulled off to the side of the road the road is now if you go back as I have with Ansel to try and find that as act spot the old road was a little bit lower the new road is high Oh is higher and paved back back then it was kind of like this dirt road and so at least three people have spent hundreds of hours figuring out exactly what day and what moment this photograph was taken it was taken I haven't got it written down here but they know the precise minute it was taken on November 1st 1941 and uh with the azimuth they do all this stuff here with that and uh so Ansel's calling telling Erica get up on the top of the car on the platform he's gotta get his tripod set up he's gotta get his camera is view cameras the eight by ten and then he's got to get them in the the the dark coffin he's got them to get the right filter and he's and and up and the lens and so he's getting it he says he's yelling instructions and his son his friend best for cédric are with him yelling instructions he said Oh where's my photometer of my light meter he can't find his light meter so if he says he knows that the moon is 250 candles per square foot well by some heebie-jeebie situation if you extrapolate you know what your exposure is at bla bla bla so he sets that and takes the picture and as he he takes one photograph it clicks the shutter once pulls the slide to turn the holder over to get another sheet of film in there and to have a safety because he said when you get it you have a good picture you really need a safety witness so Keith being scrunched on the floor and but the light went off the crosses because the Sun suddenly dropped down so he only got one exposure and he said even when he took it at the time he knew that it was an important photograph but this is what he saw when he took this photograph he knew he was going to make the sky black maybe not as black as he did late in life but blacker then then certainly was here this is so uninteresting and it was a real challenge see how the white clouds are kind of absolutely empty such a no-no and that the moon you've got to have some definition in the moon and can't have this the white round thing what is interesting is that it was funny gibbous moon it's not a full moon if it had been a full moon but in the middle of the picture we've been just beyond pedestrian so I'm going to show you what he does when he prayers a negative see how those clouds are just solid white and see how little information there is in the foreground he gave it water baths development which I don't know slowly nurses along something or other but it you know didn't he it wasn't quite right so here's the very first print he made about within six weeks of taking the the negative typically when he got home you'd unpack the car and he said when he got home he knew that the he would always know even before he unpack or did anything he would know what the best photographs he were that were that he had taken on a trip there weren't going to be any surprises what you got door and watching once you got in the dark room so he knew this was it so right away he wanted to make a print and this he sold or gave to a friend of his in Yosemite and look how light the sky is and look at all the clouds up there see those high clouds on the left and the right and the and the boy the clouds are really white and it's just not very exciting but it is the first one so that's interesting now here's what he considered a really really good print this one is made this is a late print so late print about 1979 and I could argue that I think the part of the problem is that we're looking on this black screen that and it's not glossy that the glow here it looks better over here the the gloss on on his on his glossy photographs that the surface is so so seductive I don't know what that white thing is on the left there that's smudged but anyway it's a really really gorgeous picture and you just actually never get tired of looking at it how did he document the prints how they walk he didn't he signed them in the lower rate right and then somebody the assistant whoever was the assistant I'm me would die and we put a stamp on the back with his name and we'd fill in the title he didn't nothing was numbered he believed that numbering and auditioning photographs was terrible because the whole point of a negative is that it's infinitely reproducible unless you step on it on the floor and you can make 1000 you can make 2,000 you can make 3,000 negatives and he wanted to after he died he wanted his negatives they're part of his archive at the University of Arizona so it's a teaching University and they got a center for creative photography and he thought in the best world that I guess a graduate student not a freshman would be able to take his moonrise negative and go in the darkroom and printed he even said at one point and they could print it upside down and backwards they're purple or you know and he he didn't think it was a holy thing he wanted to be people to be able to experiment and make their own creative statement of course it hasn't worked out that way because they're not going to hand Ansel's negative to anybody and so it hasn't really I don't think anyone's using even a copy negative advances but it was a great idea it was a great idea here's what he looked at at the end of his life and I worked for him with his beard sometimes it would be shorter sometimes it'd be longer and and his glasses he purchased glasses up on his head like this and this is after he just come out of the darker because he's wearing this really ghastly brown rubber rat apron it's just so and it was already old by the time I get there and he's got his sleeves rolled up and see his hand can you see that his fingers look kind of miss shape in there and that's his office in there at one point we were cleaning out we found all these degrees I mean you name it he got he who had never graduated from high school eighth grade was his last certificate had gotten honorary degrees from Harvard Princeton Yale so we got them all out and we hung them all up on the walls and and he had no ego at the whole thing and what was really painful was to see Matt Harvard sitting on the dais with leontyne price and Idol Linus Paul all these famous people on answer was ill at ease because he hadn't even graduated from high school and he was ill at ease and they were all and throw all over them you know it was so interesting he was he was so so modest and here's the way I looked at when we were this is shortly after his show at the Met and see he's flirting even there so oh that last print I showed this is by Alan Ross his Polaroid by his assistant and this is by our Arnold Newman a really fine fine photographer he came out it just that is Ansel right this was um the back side of his house away the ocean was out in that direction and there was a little tiny garden here and there was a big rock monolith thing here that they blast it out and it was they put a metal door it was his vault where he kept his negatives and he was happiest if he was either in the darkroom or sitting out in the vault where it was cold and there were spiders and he was sitting on pricked on this little stool looking through his negatives I mean you just knew where you could find Ansel so okay anybody got any questions yes the the technique of the zone system developed from his earliest images or that started with the chromatic film and what influences brought him to that product because he because he knew he needed a technical means to get what he wanted with the negative and hit and miss just wasn't working you know you'd go out and you'd change the exposure and you'd make a note this the first frame is this in the second frame isn't it and he knew you just wasting untold time so he knew if he had a system that he could put in practice that he would save himself a lot of time in and he would get better negatives the whole point was to get the right information in the negative you don't have the information in the negative forget it there's nothing you can do I mean he was really good at kind of almost creating it out a whole cloth as you could see from that white sky that turned to have lots of clouds but there must have been something there on the negative that just it was just very very ghostly but so so he always said you have to have a good neg and the better the negative the better the print but well depends on whose printing but on the other hand all he knew with all he knew about technique over and over again when I'm writing was I was writing this book every negative seems to be difficult and I'm thinking where are the easy negative and they're just there just aren't any was there was always some when you're out of doors there's always some factor you can't cope with them in the Sun the wind or something they like but we he made this he has a famous picture of redwoods that take taken is a cross it's kind of an icon for the conservation movement the Sierra Club used it for many years but on their stationery and stuff but it's actually taken across a clear cut you you see the trees in the distance because it's across a clear cut but you don't see the clear cut in the foreground you see the beautiful redwood trees that is a great distance is taken with a telephoto lens and and we a man ordered from Ansel he saw it in a book and called up and said could I buy a print and you know two hundred and fifty dollars she sent a check sure and he got the print and he called up and he said well I want my money back and I said Oh tell me what's wrong we pride ourselves well this print is not sharp I think you should tell mr. Adams that the the trees are the is blurry and they'll and sure enough it is a little blurry and I went to Ansel I said and so this guy wants his money back because he says your picture isn't right this isn't is poor and he says we're telling it was taking with a telephoto graph long distance in the wind was blowing the little feathery feathery pine needles and so I went back and called the guy said well you know you can have your money well that's all right I'll keep it thin but people the point is when people get an answer at his photograph they scrutinize it and then it better be perfect so there was you know that black sky of moonrise the only problem one problem of printing it so black every defect in the paper shows there was one batch of paper Ansel had made like 50 moon rises from a box of paper and every you couldn't see it in the darker when he was printing of it afterwards every single one had kind of a hickey in the black sky that it was impossible you you just you couldn't send it out like that so that they were all down the drain you know one of the weeks worth of work so anyway aunt Ansel made beautiful prints and I mean I think no one could print like he could people have said there was no printer like Ansel but I think his negatives to start with gorgeous yes good question he couldn't give up commercial work until he was right before I I went to work for him in seven 1974 when he was 72 years old in about 1970 when he was 68 years old he could finally give up commercial work most of his income came from Kodak fortune if you open I know because I knew he took some pictures for fortune magazine so and they were I found some old fortune magazines lying around I just started paging through the book thinking well maybe I'll find it it falls open to a two-page spread of an open-pit copper mine at the Kennecott Copper Company in Colorado I said that's an Ansel Adams that's the most gorgeous photograph ever I don't care if it's an open-pit copper mine that's just gorgeous and sure enough that was you how many have ever seen the Kodak Colorama is in Grand Central Station Ansel did about 16 of those he'd go all over the country there was at one point they wanted to have a Kodak Colorama they're these giant giant transparencies that were up on one of the balconies I mean they were like yards and yards long and they wanted poppies a sea of California poppies oh for spring well sounds gorgeous doesn't it well he drove all over California and the poppies weren't blooming or he'd get there and they just bloomed or he'd get there and be a bad day so if he finally came up with one but it wasn't ever the one he wanted he spent and and he would he would say that I think he was always talking about the wolf's at the door his family had grown up his father the family fortune disappeared through you know a bad management fire some stuff like this and pink ship sinking and so they lived in kind of genteel poverty and his father had kind of a very low-level job at but and paid back every penny that the family owned after this family disaster and so Ansel grew up at one point he said they had a hard tack to eat and I'm not sure about that they had a house man but but maybe the house man was eating hardtack too but he was always extremely frugal I mean just extremely all on the other hand if he went to Eduard Weston's for dinner you ate what he'd photographed if he photographed a cauliflower and some nuts and some leeks that was dinner if he went to Ansel's house and they used to joke about this if he went to Ansel's house it was the best thick sirloin steak in them best scotch and you know ever there was it was always living larger than life and even the there's even correspondence and writing by his assistants and friends saying you know we really actually didn't know how he did this how did he keep up this lifestyle how did he support this lifestyle because nobody else was making a living every wasn't know what Edward Weston everybody was poor as a Churchmouse and here was Ansel carrying on like this and it's always the latest new Cadillac with an extra axle it up you know in the latest new camera and the latest lenses in the latest everything and so he lived very large just he didn't know how to do it others but he was extremely frugal in if I threw something away like a used folder he'd get very upset dear I could have used that I once at one point I cleaned out his drawer and there was a three hole press approximately from 1890 and I got him a new one and threw it away oh he he never let me forgot that whole three whole press you know if I still had my three hole press from 1890 so he was he was extremely frugal and and and it was very very hard going his assistant saying was that he was always trying to keep the wolf from the door and that really was the way he looked at it he was trying to keep the wolf from the door yes his friendship with Georgia O'Keefe beginning his involvement in the Secret Circle was that something that he most Eagles oh he was looking he was looking to meet Stiglitz Stiglitz was you know his gallery was going all the way in the 20s and Ansel didn't meet him till 1933 in 1933 his friend Albert bender who was a philanthropist and art collector said to Ansel according to Ansel always time you met Stieglitz he really is the big deal the big cheese and even if he's pushy and pompous and it won't stop talking you should go a meeting so his father gave Virginia's father gave them three thousand dollars to two and they took a train to New York and maybe it was $1,000 unfortunately but when they got to Santa Fe there was a bank failure it was just just before the banks the depression and so you couldn't exchange traveler's checks or cash a cheque or anything so they were they were panelists for about ten days until it kind of got resolved and then at the at the same time Virginia was pregnant and they to save money slept in a single berth okay I think Virginia was really a trooper so they get to New York and he goes to see Alfred Stieglitz and shows him his pictures and Alfred Stieglitz says these are some of the finest photographs I've ever seen but he doesn't offer him a show so Ansel leaves and immediate immediately falls under the spell of Alfred Stieglitz because he was foreordained and eventually Stieglitz offers him a show in 1936 and while we're standing in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the opening of his exhibition in 1974 which was a big deal Ansel turns to me and says oh you know my show at Stieglitz's gallery in 1936 was really better and I'm like oh is that so and I'm thinking what is it about this show so I began doing some research on this show I found this little pamphlet well the pamphlet lists all these pictures like rusty anchors leaf and stick there the show is in 36 so it was before all the famous pictures you saw before moonrise winter sunrise any of the famous photographs that spring to mind and I thought what the heck were people looking at that this was supposed to be so divine so I found Ansel had taken some installation shots but people were moving and it was I don't know boy he was having a bad photo day because that you could barely make out what was on the wall but he used to say he wrote he wrote to his wife and to it and his girlfriend at the time that Stieglitz psychoanalyzed him the hanging of the photographs this was the greatest you know he and so I began to look but I went to answer I said you know what are these pictures all I don't know dear well I finally found almost all of the originals because they'd been purchased by people who were had were art collectors and so I could track down quite a few and we even put the show back together with the original prints and those prints were so gorgeous because he was printing for Stieglitz and his assistant in the darkroom was also the girlfriend so she recalled that she would say Oh Ansel of course his wife two small children were upstairs so this was fairly difficult and she would she recall that she would say Oh Ansel do you think you could make it more you know I don't know what and so answer would go back and try again and so it was a combination of printing for Stieglitz and having Patsy at the darkroom so he almost left his wife because of Patsy but in the last analysis he couldn't do that he just he was a really Victorian gentleman so when someone asked me if I had to fair with him I think little do IDO I mean he was just a wonderful Victorian gentleman you know the thought would have never crossed his mind so yes you've had your hand up rolling him No No Ansel always printed his own negatives he just wouldn't doesn't understand it how other people send their negatives out to be printed for him you can see the printing is as much about the artistry as taking the negative the taking the negative is just the first step and so he he just really didn't understand understand that concept he early on wanted visitors to Yosemite to be able to buy something that wasn't didn't wasn't marked made in Taiwan and so he dedicated about 12 of his negatives to be used for making what he called special edition prints meaning his assistant would print them just little contact prints like this but they were real you know and they're kind of banged out believe me there wasn't five minutes of dodging and you know on some of these prints there were on on Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake I think it's eight minutes of dodging and burning on clearing when a storm it's about three or four so he could get very very very difficult and complex and they had just what kind of banged out but but they are a real photograph mounted on all rag board by an artist they have some value in merit and he he felt that if he went to a national park you should be able to take home a memento that that was of some real had some real merit and so those negatives were always printed by his assistants and they still are today his assistant in ninth from 1975 to 77 was named Alan Ross and he still he's almost as old as I am lives in Santa Fe prints these negatives and they're sold in Yosemite at the Ansel Adams gallery of course the price has gone up I think it was two dollars and fifty cents in 1944 I know I don't even want to think about it now yes when he went on these shoots like early on and uh how long did he space or like something beautiful how long did he spend like the trip of day a week well well he said that if you spend too long here you're going to miss something there and he never believed that you'd go someplace and stand around for a half a day waiting for the light to be right he just didn't have that much patience and also haha he only photographed at dawn and dusk in the middle of the day is called let's go have a steak let's he always had his typewriter with him so he could always write letters or he could revise the latest textbook or he could write an article for a magazine and so he was never at a loss he was just incapable of relaxing and not not working it was 365 days a year and so if you look at dawn and dusk that leaves a whole lot of time unaccounted for and it doesn't give you much time to photograph and he felt that that he was a past master in what always amazed me was Ansel knew we flew over you 70 a couple of times together and he would say look out at the sea air he oh I know it like the back of my hand because he hiked every trail and climbed every peak and so when he took his photographs they were informed by such a deep knowledge understanding and love however he could go to Glacier National Park for three days and if you've been to Glacier a lot of it is a drive through unless you're going to be doing some back country hiking a drive through on the going to the Sun Road and your take stopping at every outlook that everybody else has has and he could still take a phenomenal photograph that's better than anybody else's photograph of Lake st. Mary's you know so he had a he had a gift and that was what amazed me was that he could find the real mine the real place even if he'd only just encountered it so yes do you think the view cam was the ultimate for choose any of you some other cameras no I use a four by five and five by seven and four and two and a quarter four and a quarter and he ended up with a Hasselblad at the end of his life he used a Hasselblad because he just really couldn't couldn't it was just he well he loved it and Victor Hasselblad gave you the best possible and he just couldn't deal with all the equipment and at the very end he had such bad arthritis that when he did go out to photograph which wasn't very often as he said I said Ansel don't you miss striding the High Sierra with your camera and taking pictures he said I've done that and I'm like oh looks like been there done that but you know he had and he said and every time I look at the picture I am transported back in time to the moment I stood there and clicked the shutter it the famous saying was he had absolutely no idea what year he took a picture but he could remember everything about the camera the filter the lens the f-stop the development that but he couldn't remember the date so for instance at moonrise Hernandez that somebody finally figured out the exact minute it was taken for years he dated at 1944 even though it had been published in 1941 at a certain point because he didn't care he just didn't think day three employee said dates are for people like me you know that want to get exercised about days film yes when he was in the talk where was he sleeping in the park in Yosemite Park well he because he married Virginia best and her father Harry Cassie best painted the most monumentally awful landscapes of Yosemite oil paintings you have ever seen in true Victorian style and Ansel would never allow a single one to be hung in his home when he was married to Virginia the minute Ansel died one came out and was front and center in the house and I thought oh boy and so I really love this so Harry Cassie best because he was a painter somehow it was an inholding he owned owned a little studio in Yosemite Valley I think he owns a structure and he leases though you have to get a lease but he had a structure so then they added a little house in the back on the house Groo and there was another little house so Ansel had a house to live in and he in fact and Virginia lived there from 1937 to 1944 with their two kids and their kids went to school there at the little one-room schoolhouse and he lived there they still had their house in San Francisco but he he principally lived in Sam he slept on top of the platform on his car in a sleeping bag but when he was so uncomfortable but when he was young he would set out with a blanket a coffee at 10:00 coffee can and some coffee and a loaf of just a crust a thing of bread and maybe some bacon and that was him and he rolled himself up in his blanket and lie on a granite rock and sleep so so he knew a hard hardship but he thought it was glorious and their their their quotes for you to lie to lie in the matrix of granite rock and look up at this look up and see the sky full of stars was just you know like otherworldly experience and and you know there weren't many people there and there sure no jet contrails which really bugged him he didn't think there should be any jet contrails over any national parks because it brings modernity into what should be a sublime experience you and I think trying sold it's why I had to stop working for Ansel because I lost his confidence because in about 1979 or 1980 when it was printing when I started working for him in 1974 he was still at the peak of his printing skills any print was just absolutely gorgeous you would have absolutely no quarrel with it whereas if you look at his early work it was printed a little softer a little more muted so and everybody's work tends to get a little more contrasting with age and I think partly that's the what you're you the paper you're using but it's also something of just about aging I mean you see this in a lot of photographers work edward weston paul strand and so it began to go just kind of went over a cliff for starters he would print the print to dark then he would tone it too much so that the toning you you add toner after you print the print to make to take away the kind of greenish cast that sometimes they're in black and white photographs and so he would be Antonian so much that they began looking like sepia-toned photographs in the 19th century and so I was like what is going on here and so after about a few months I said I pulled it clearing winter storm or a moonrise out from a little while you know six months a year earlier we didn't ever have them lying around because the minute they were finished you had to mount them he signed them I'd spotted them I titled them and they were sent out people were waiting all over the country and they would wait sometimes nine months reverent and I got one out incident because answer would come out in that darkroom with his glasses up he'd come out of the darkroom holding a dripping wet print so it's kind of hanging down like a wet towel and he'd say I think I got it and then you were supposed to say oh it looks beautiful not that's so dark so you're a part of your responsibility was the cheer the cheering section so I we had some mounted prints with the ones that were too dark and John Sexton or Alan Ross the assistants that were there with me when I they were the darker misses we'd be gnashing our teeth saying what are we going to do so I undertook I said Ansel just look what do you think of this this print that you made you know lash oh that prints very weak this is much better I said she really thinks so ants tall you don't think this is a beautiful luminous tones here look at the silvery quality oh no dear that that print is weak weak and anemic or his favorite descriptions especially of early vintage prints that is weak and anemic and I so and he said finally and I was being believing I was being mmm very gentle in my suggestions and he finally said I am the artist and I know what's best well he never ever raised his voice I was like kind of like a puddle on the floor but I knew right then I guess I couldn't lie to him and so he'd walk out and say isn't it you know and I've decided okay I have to leave I can't lie to this man anymore and but but then and then a couple years later he finally went to a top i man he was going to local ophthalmologist in Carmel and they said his pies were fine he finally was went to the top guy in Washington DC and they he had something where you oh well it was um no cataracts so he couldn't see the dark so the reason he was printing darker and darker and darker and toning more nor he couldn't see the black well there's the perfect explanation of course I didn't know that at the time I you know he says he's the artist and but the funny thing is the same thing happened with Paul strand as his assistant told me that late in life he finally had his cataracts removed and after they did he saw the prints he'd been making and he said to his assistants and his wife why didn't anybody tell me okay well Ansel but then Ansel the doctor said Ansel I can eat easily remove these cataracts there's just just nothing you know you won't even notice that and then you'll be able to what he didn't want to mess around with his eyes at that point I think he was 82 years old and he just he he didn't want to eighty years old he didn't didn't want to take the chance so he didn't but John Sexton will tell you by the time he left I think Ansel was finally something even even asking because he would ordinarily go up with kind of a thing uh to make sure you had it crisp and sharp on the on the paper you know the projection and he'd go up and check it and look at well he'd even had the assistant do that too and when that got to the he then begin especially in the toning process he'd say do you think this is enough now before he never ever would have asked anybody's opinion but so he was relying on somebody else's eyes at that point which was you know radically radically different but I'm just what makes me sad is so many of the very dark prints are the prints that are in museums today because they're purchased by museums late in his life and so often often when I go to a museum exhibition I kind of cringe because it's not Ansel this best and I think a museum should have Ansel it his best so but anyway there it is yes I would bomb the friend was it would land of friend Edwin land was he has a good friend I don't know Howard bought know Edwin land was his great friend and he was a consultant for Polaroid for 40 years Edwin land wanted to knew that Ansel needed money and he said I'll give you ten thousand dollars a year and Anne said oh well in return I'll do all this technical work on your Polaroid film and your cameras and eben land was like so Ansel spent thousands of hours he wrote over 1 million memoranda we counted two Polaroid about their film and cameras and you know the joke was what do you do with these from Ansel they would just kind of put him in these boat folders and put him on the shelf because it was Minoan was really interested Edwin land just wanted to support him but he could not possibly have taken the money without getting anything in return something in return he was much too proud there has said what it said f/8 and be there no I thought no his license plate said god I can't remember Oh f 64 no I'm that you know I did have a special license plate but I forgotten what it is he is different cars his son at a certain point about when I was working on this book I had to get in touch with his son whose name I'm 69 his son is about 78 maybe or 80 and we had to go through the cars because the different cars in the photograph sometimes the car will give you the clue to what the date of the picture is or what trip he was on or who was there or something and uh and um it was so we went through all the different cars and which is really interesting when they're always this huge station wagons and then he he typically carry an extra axle with him because once the axle and broken and he been in the middle of you know East Jesus and there is not no help round and he had to wait days to get a new action so we always the joke was he always had a spare axle which means the car was so heavy so yes Museum in Arizona the prints that are there do you know those are from they'll they have his archive so they have prints from when he was you know they have the original album they have they have it all so that I just yep they have everything they have everything and in general they put up the really beautiful prints when they put them up listen you know Ansel would would would would would fight me over this he'd say and and you know John Szarkowski the famous curator of the Museum of Modern Art would fight me on this - he'd say Andrea every artists vision changes and Ansel's vision changing became more intense more brooding as the world became more difficult more complex more unhappy and so we kind of mirrored that with this kind of darkness and I happen to just disagree with John Szarkowski because I know he went to the eye doctor and they found out that he had cataracts John Szarkowski didn't want to hear that story for me when when I told him that so but that I'm anyway I'm and there was such a precipitous change because when I arrived in 1974 in June the prints were just gorgeous and only about two or three years later that the assistant and I were all and the lady that was spotting we were all scratching our heads saying what is happening here we don't know what to do so but they're still beautiful people the people you actually have to have a comparison to know so most people only see one print so you just see one print your first of all you're carried away by the scene is the most gorgeous landscape and then you're carried away by his sense of composition which is just as they said Georgia O'Keeffe said when you were on one of these trips with Ansel Newton he'd set up his try but there's also happen on the Sierra Club High trips to the minute he set up his tripod everybody else was a photographer would we run over and set their tripods up next tune because they figured ah this is what we're supposed to be photographing but then there's a famous story where his friend Cedric write set his tripod up next to ansel in 1932 and they took the same photograph of the icy precipice Lake and Ansel's is one of his 10 greatest pictures in Cedric's photograph I haven't ever even seen that when Cedric saw Ansel's photographs about five years later he said jeez why didn't I see that he didn't see it the same way Ansel did it was the way he framed it and O'Keefe said that who was it that wrote Beaumont Newhall or Nancy Newell that Ansel just knew where to put the tripod where the tripod hole should be there's a whole body of photographers that go back to the places that Ansel photographed and the eyes sometimes they send them to me and their photographs of what it looks like today it's really fun you know it's like retracing his steps so well thank you very much for more information please visit us online give us a call or stop by our New York City super store you can also connect with us on the web you

Channel: B&H Photo Video Pro Audio

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Keywords: pro audio, photo, bh photo, video, Andrea G. Stillman, BH Photo, BH Photo Video, Ansel Adams, Event Space, B&H, bhvideos

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Length: 82min 21sec (4941 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2013