Ansel Adams Read online

  For Jim

  Ansel Adams, Thunderstorm over North Palisade, the Sierra Nevada, 1933

  Sierra Club Outing

  Contents

  Preface

  1 SAN FRANCISCO

  2 YOSEMITE

  3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISION

  4 MONOLITH

  5 SOUTHWEST

  6 STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

  7 SIERRA

  8 RECOGNITION

  9 LOSING HEART

  10 FRIENDS

  11 PROGRESS

  12 A DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

  13 MOONRISE

  14 GUGGENHEIM YEARS

  15 A DOCUMENTARY APPROACH

  16 CONCLUSIONS

  17 ANOTHER PATH

  18 MORTAL COMBAT

  19 PRICE RISE

  20 TOO LITTLE TIME

  21 LIFE AND DEATH

  22 POST-MORTEM

  23 AFTERIMAGE

  Picture Section 1

  Picture Section 2

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Credits

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Also by Mary Street Alinder

  Preface

  Ansel Adams sometimes joked that I remembered more about his life than he did. Having read the thousands of letters he had written and received, studied proof prints of all forty thousand of his negatives, worked closely with him during the roller coaster of his last years, I knew Ansel very well. His achievements as a great photographer and environmentalist were singular, but the truth of what drove him to create his inimitable images and to fight his consequential battles will evaporate with the passage of time. While he was joined by an incredible cast of people who shared these adventures, today, those who truly knew him are few in number. Now, with his afterimage still luminous in my mind, I must share what I have learned.

  Although this biography has been carefully researched throughout, the tenor of the book changes when, in the late 1970s, I entered Ansel’s world as his assistant, because from that point on it is told from the inside. My job—directing Ansel’s staff, producing his autobiography, and taking care of him—was not a simple matter of nine-to-five. I was on call seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, from his Carmel studio to the White House, from Ansel’s vigorous days to his repeated hospitalizations. Following his death, in 1984, I spent the next four years completing many of the projects he had left unfinished, formed in spirit although not fully in substance.

  Carefully considered, this book is personal in the telling. Beyond knowing the man, beyond admiring the work, I loved Ansel as if he were my son, and at times he called me Little Mother. If I lack absolute objectivity, I have nonetheless tried to achieve a balance resonant with the truth as I have seen it.

  The question I am most often asked is, “How did you get to work for Ansel Adams?” My husband, Jim, and I first met Ansel in 1967, when we attended a summer workshop at the University of Oregon on Group f.64, the venerated standard-bearers of straight photography. The teachers included original group members Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, and Brett Weston. Jim and I arrived weary after driving for a night and a day and a night from Albuquerque; we would rather purchase a book or a print than pay for a motel room—couldn’t afford both.

  Jim and I are very much children of the sixties. We met and were married in Somalia, where Jim was posted as a Peace Corps volunteer and where I ventured between college semesters to visit my family. (My father worked there on behalf of the U.S. government in the field of education.) After Somalia, Jim and I resumed our pursuit of higher education at the University of New Mexico, I in English and he in photography, attracted by Professor Van Deren Coke and the offer of a fellowship.

  Civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement: events mandated an involved generation. Art photography was also in ferment. It was an exciting place to be. The perception of photography students was probably unanimous: rich and famous Ansel Adams was the fat cat of photography. In this we voted with the majority, finding that his images of a great America did not speak to us. They were irrelevant icons. America was napalm and Nixon, Montgomery and King. Our concerns were immediate and deadly; the Sierra Nevada did not have social significance. Later, we saw that it did (and still does).

  But in 1967 we pledged allegiance to full-frame, assaultive imagery. We were fired by protest and by the injustices of our country. Ansel’s decades of critical leadership in the environmental movement were either little known to the photography community or judged immaterial. At the Group f.64 workshop, Ansel appeared to be in every way a monolith: unapproachable because he was unrelatable, an anachronism.

  Imogen Cunningham, in contrast, was always a woman of today. At the age of ninety-one, she was an enchantress who rode around in a VW camper wearing long, hippie dresses just like ours, although hers were ironed. During the days of Group f.64, she had produced powerful close-ups of leaves and flowers, but thirty-five years later she was photographing the street people of San Francisco. Imogen was relevant.

  Although our respect for Ansel was limited by his apparent disregard of the turmoil of the real world, we had enough sense of the history of photography to hold him in awe, and were mostly silent in his presence. In the panel discussions, Ansel romanticized the past and Imogen gave him hell, insisting on the unvarnished truth: “Oh, Ansel, it wasn’t like that at all!” And so she became our heroine, playing David to his Goliath.

  Returning to New Mexico, I discovered that the University Art Museum had purchased and placed on long-term display his most famous photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. I found I could not just walk by it: each time it stopped me.

  In addition to my coursework and engaging in political activism, I became the editor of the student-run literary and art magazine. In 1968, Jim received the first master of fine arts degree in photography awarded by the university. I was still a few credits shy of a bachelor’s degree when we moved to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where Jim had been hired as an assistant professor to teach photography in the Department of Art. Over the next nine years, with maturing crops of undergraduate and graduate students, we traveled the country to partake in almost any photography event or workshop held. Jim became recognized as a photographer and curator of exhibitions and was very active in the Society for Photographic Education, editing its journal and serving on its executive committee for many years, eventually as chair.

  I moved to Lincoln with great anticipation: I was ready to nest. I attended university classes throughout my pregnancy, although I had to have special permission from each department—a shocking rule. (The chairman of anthropology turned out to be Preston Holder, another original member of Group f.64.) Although we remained involved in peace causes, when Jasmine was born, my life became totally wrapped up in her. We taught ourselves natural childbirth but had to travel seventy miles, to Omaha, to find a hospital that would allow Jim in the delivery room and would let me give birth without drugs.

  Back in Lincoln, I soon began a one-woman crusade for open delivery rooms, rooming-in, and the Lamaze method. I became a certified childbirth educator, began teaching the first Lamaze childbirth courses offered in the state, formed a parenting organization, commenced classes for single parents, and ultimately initiated the first teacher-training program for the Plains states.

  Did giving birth change me that much? Maybe some sort of linkage with life past and future became undeniable when we became a family of three—as if I now felt that life on earth must be positive, or what was the point? At Oregon, Ansel had stated that the ugliness, tragedy, and cruelty of the world were all too apparent, but that we could be restored by beauty. The making and the giving of beauty were his life’s work. />
  I read Nancy Newhall’s biography of Ansel’s early years, The Eloquent Light, as well as the Daybooks of Edward Weston. I learned that Edward and Ansel, the two great leaders of mid-twentieth-century photography, had chosen opposite ways of life, Edward’s as simple as Ansel’s was complex. With shock I realized that it was Ansel who had lived what I had come to define as the good life—that is, a moral life. My requirements for a hero were tough, for I demanded not only a superb artist but a responsible citizen.

  In 1974, Jim and I took off on a long-awaited sabbatical with our full family, now three children strong, to photograph America. Ansel had asked Jim to judge a competition for the Friends of Photography in Carmel, so we worked that into our itinerary. With the jurying accomplished, Ansel invited both of us for cocktails at his home. Little did he know we were camping with an infant, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old; either we had to bring them along or one of us had to stay at the campsite.

  The five of us arrived and were warmly greeted by both Ansel and his wife, Virginia. Potential disasters were everywhere, from graceful crystal bowls containing floating flowers to tiny Baccarat animals and fragile shells; at least Ansel’s photographs hung safely above our children’s reach. Somehow, all three little ones behaved wonderfully. Years later, when we had become part of Ansel and Virginia’s household, as I opened the front door for the nightly group of cocktail guests, it was easy to remember the special first time for us, and the thrill of being generously welcomed into that spectacular space in the Carmel Highlands.

  Shortly before we left that night, Ansel said to Jim, “We will gladly pay you the judging fee of five hundred dollars, or you can choose any one of my prints.” To his everlasting credit, Jim turned to me without hesitation and asked, “What photograph would you like?” Without a doubt, it would be Moonrise. We returned to Lincoln and placed our framed print over the fireplace, so no longer did I have only the memory of the one I had so loved in New Mexico.

  Although I finally earned my B.A. from the University of Nebraska, with Jim and the kids attending my graduation, childbirth education continued to be my career. I decided that I needed more legitimacy, since I had been criticized for being neither a doctor nor a nurse. I won a fellowship, but I felt there was no way I could begin medical school in Omaha with three children, so I returned to the university to become a registered nurse, graduating in June 1977. I am detailing my convoluted story here simply because it would turn out to be important to my relationship with Ansel that I was this strange combination of English major and registered nurse.

  At about this same time, Jim was offered a job that he truly wanted, as executive director of the aforementioned Friends of Photography, with Ansel as president and chairman of the board of trustees. Lincoln was an idyllic city in which to raise three small children, but we were ready for a big change, if not for the shock of Carmel housing prices. I immediately found a job at the local hospital, working the night shift in the maternity area.

  Jim thrived at the Friends. From the beginning, he and Ansel were comfortable with each other and worked well together. Over the course of a steady succession of social occasions, Ansel and I became much better acquainted. After a year, I resigned from the hospital to accept a position as manager of the Weston Gallery in Carmel, where I learned a great deal about the business of photography and happily also saw firsthand the extraordinary qualities of original prints by Edward and Ansel and many others. As good as that job was, when Ansel asked me to direct his staff, in 1979, I jumped at the opportunity.

  Ansel hired me for a number of reasons, the first being that we got along so well. Second, I was knowledgeable about photography, both its aesthetics and history, and possessed the finely honed organizational skills of a working mother. Third, he was curious about all things medical; during my year at the hospital, it was not unusual for him to stop by my area for a chat. In me, he now had a personal nurse. Fourth, my avocation is serious cooking, and Ansel’s was eating. Finally, and most important, Ansel had not yet written one word of his autobiography, although his 1978 deadline had come and gone. With my background as an editor and writer, I was to “make Ansel write his autobiography.” And I did.

  It is a shock to me that Ansel died thirty years ago. It seems like forever, but his presence is still strong in my consciousness and my life. His example is always before me. Since this book was first published, eighteen years ago, of course I have learned more, made some wonderful discoveries, and new events have happened, enough to significantly enrich this new edition. Over time I have come to a few different conclusions about the impact of people’s actions in Ansel’s life and afterwards. I believe I have now a greater balance of vision, understanding that the legacy Ansel left us through the example of his life and the concrete expressions of his soul in his photographs is where we should dwell and what will endure.

  Mary Street Alinder

  June 2014

  Chapter 1: San Francisco

  It began with a low, faraway rumble, as if a thunderstorm were brewing in the distance. At first the house gently trembled, its shaking increasing with the tempo of the earth. Four-year-old Ansel Adams jerked awake as his small bed was buffeted from wall to wall; Nellie, his nanny, grabbed the bed and held it to her own.1 The bedroom’s west-facing window burst into fragments. A deafening noise smothered the senses as the great earthquake laid claim to San Francisco at 5:12:05 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906.2

  After seventy-five seconds of terror, it stopped. The violent release of pent-up pressure caused by the colliding North American and Pacific tectonic plates had displaced the earth from nine to twenty-one feet, with a force measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale, probably the largest quake ever to hit California.3 San Francisco was in shambles and afire within minutes thanks to exploding gas mains.4 Although firm numbers have never been established, between five hundred and three thousand people are thought to have died.

  Nellie led Ansel by the hand across the second-floor hallway to his parents’ bedroom, where they found his mother, Olive, sitting straight up in bed, her eyes riveted on the new view of the Golden Gate afforded by the absent fireplace. Its bricks had shattered her husband’s new greenhouse below. Ansel’s father, Charles, was in Washington, D.C., on business.

  Olive pulled herself together and surveyed the wreckage. She found they had been very lucky. Although most breakables had broken, her jars of canned fruits, vegetables, pickles, and preserves were all intact, still sitting in the cellar in neat rows. Olive toted up the damage: one chimney missing, two fireplaces and the greenhouse lost, the plaster walls riddled with cracks, and woodwork hanging wildly from walls.5 At first inspection the house seemed structurally sound, but in fact its foundation had been damaged.6 Kong, the family’s Chinese cook, had suffered a concussion; dazed, he started lighting a fire in the ruined fireplace, which could have burned the house down if Olive had not stopped him just in time.7

  Olive Adams was a woman devoted to order and routine. The first task, she determined, would be to make breakfast. The kitchen stove was carried outside, wood was lighted, and a small hold on normalcy was regained.

  The strongest aftershock hit at 8:14:28 a.m., when Ansel was playing in the garden. The earth flung his small body skyward, and gravity then dashed it face-first into a low wall, breaking his nose bloodily to the left (a political tendency Ansel would affirm to his last days). When the family doctor finally arrived, he advised Olive that it would be best to wait until the boy matured before setting his nose. The quake instantly rendered Ansel a mouth breather, his face forever slightly asymmetrical—a condition that he later playfully claimed became permanent simply because he never did mature.

  In 1906, San Francisco had a population of 410,000, making it the largest city in the American West. The earthquake and the firestorm that followed it inflicted damage estimated at between 350 million and one billion dollars, plunging the city into an immediate economic depression. A huge portion of the population was left homel
ess. Two hundred thousand took shelter in Golden Gate Park alone, one mile south of the Adams home; another refugee camp was based in the forested Presidio, the military post just north of them. The Adamses’ house provided temporary shelter for more family members and friends than it could hold, and their camps spilled out across the neighboring dunes.8

  San Francisco burned for three full days. With a sense of wonder, Ansel observed the curtain of smoke far to the east and the stream of newly homeless people carrying their remaining possessions. As night descended, the view shifted to walls of distant flame. The fire’s progress was finally halted at seven o’clock on Saturday morning, April 21, little more than three miles away from the Adamses’.9 Years later, Ansel recalled that the earthquake and fire constituted his closest experience with acute human tragedy, even though he was at a safe remove from the cataclysm.10

  Only small amounts of accurate news, and masses of inaccurate bulletins, reached the East Coast and the ears of Charles Adams. Some reports had San Francisco in total ruin and in addition hit by a tidal wave. Charles Adams boarded the first train west, changed in Chicago, and kept on going. When the train stopped in Reno, the stationmaster handed out letters and telegrams addressed to the worried passengers, including one from Olive’s father assuring Charles that the rest of the family was all right.11 He traveled from Oakland across the San Francisco Bay by ferry, arriving in the city on Monday, April 23, five days after the earthquake. Acquiring a pass that allowed him to move through the devastation, he walked across the city to a joyous homecoming, finding his family safe and his home nearly intact.12

  Charles’s father, William James Adams, had arrived in San Francisco in 1850 at the age of twenty-one from his home in Thomaston, Maine, soon after learning of the California Gold Rush.13 After an unsuccessful try at mining, he put his entrepreneurial mind to work and decided that he could make money supplying the other miners. He opened a wholesale grocery in Sacramento, and was a man of affluence by the time he sold it, in 1856. He returned home to Maine to find a wife, settling on a wealthy young widow named Cassandra Hills McIntyre, who at just twenty years old was proudly possessed of luxuriant, dark, curly locks. The next year, in 1857, the couple boarded a ship bound for their new home in San Francisco; by taking the ocean route, William hoped to spare his bride the dangers of a cross-continental trip. Instead, when they journeyed over the Isthmus of Panama, she caught Chagas’ disease (caused by a tropical parasite) and permanently lost her beautiful hair.14 Cassandra must have truly wondered what she had got herself into when they arrived in San Francisco and found that it had just been struck by a particularly violent earthquake (not, however, as large as the one to come in 1906; the city was already optimistically rebuilding).