Ansel Adams (1902- 1984)

Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902 to an upper class family, son of Charles and Olive Adams. He was injured at the age of four in the Great Earthquake of 1906, when an after shock threw him into a garden wall and broke his nose.

At the age of 12, his father removed him from public school and hired private tutors to educate him at home. Among his studies were Greek and piano. He was known to play in the sand dunes outside of the Golden Gate bridge where he acquired a deep appreciation of nature.

Due to his life long exposure to music, young Ansel set his ambitions on becoming a concert pianist. When he was introduced to the negatives of Paul Strand’s photographs, he became very interested in photography. He was torn between which to pursue as a career for years.

At the age of 17, Ansel Adams first saw Yosemite and was gripped by the beauty of the place. His photography of Yosemite led him to become the Sierra Club’s official photographer in 1927. It was at Half Dome that he discovered that his photographs were “an austere and blazing poetry of the real”, as he described them.

Ansel Adams was elected to the board of Directors of the Sierra Club in 1934, a position that he held for 37 years. He was a political activist for the club, lobbying in Congress for the protection, preservation, and establishment of National Parks, namely Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Under his influence the Sierra Club became a powerful, nationwide institution.

In 1968, he was awarded the National Conservation Award, the highest honor a civilian could earn from the Interior Department. In 1980, Ansel Adams received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on earth and on film.

Ansel Adams wrote many books about photography, including his trilogy of manuals, The Camera, The Negative and The Print. He co-founded Group F/64 that supported straight photography without the uses or derivatives of any other art forms. He co-created The Zone System, which allows a photographer to interpret the light that they see onto the negatives of their photographs.

Ansel Adams died in 1984 of heart failure aggravated by cancer. He was survived by his wife, Virginia, two children, and five grandchildren.