Bio Bit: Ansel Adams

The Power to Move: Ansel Adams

"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence." - Ansel Adams

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Imagine an earthquake, raw and powerful. Imagine the shear intensity of it making the ground roll like the sea and the buildings come crumbling down all around you. Imagine being thrown to the ground, as helpless as a rag doll at the mercy of its ferocity. Ansel Adams didn’t have to imagine this, it was a vivid memory from his childhood that he had experienced. He even wore the crooked nose from being slammed into a stone wall as a reminder of it for the rest of his life. As powerfully as the land had moved him physically that day in 1906, nature continued to move his soul just as powerfully from that day on. Born on Feb. 20, 1902, Ansel Adams spent most of his childhood as a loner. Rejected from several schools because he was hyperactive and troublesome, he was tutored at home by his father and aunt. A naturally shy child, Ansel had few friends and instead found companionship in nature. Every day he would hike and explore the untamed wilderness surrounding the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In 1916, after hiking through Yosemite National Park, taking pictures with the Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie camera that his parents had given him, Ansel Adams came back a changed man. The sweeping rock formations and awe inspiring heights and waterfalls of that place had sparked in him a new passion; one for both nature and photography. He began to teach himself different techniques and built up experience with the camera through experimentation. The black and white pictures of Western American lands that he took began to catch people’s attention and he began to make a good living off of the money that he earned selling prints. Joining a group of environmentalists, Ansel Adams began to promote different causes through his photography, raising awareness of the beautiful lands that were slowly being destroyed.

The Ansel Adams Gallery

As photography became more and more recognized as a fine art form in the 1960s, Ansel Adams’s work was displayed in several major art museums across the country. To the very end of his life, Ansel maintained a deep love and respect for nature, and especially for Yosemite National Park where the story all began. Every year he would go back to that park and spend time hiking and photographing its raw and powerful beauty until his death in 1984. From the earthquake that shook Ansel Adams when he was young to his photography that still moves us now, nature has been a strong moving force throughout this man’s life.

Bibliography

"Ansel Easton Adams." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

"Ansel Adams Biography." Our Mission. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.