Ansel Adams: Master of Black and White

Is there a single person who does not like Ansel Adams’ photographs? Art can be considered controversial. Some even feel ridiculed by it and respond by asking, “Is this really ‘art’?” but Ansel Adams’ work never provokes such a hostile response. Adams’ photographs are loved by art connoisseurs and skeptics alike.

One reason may be because Adams does not act like our idea of who an artist is. In the Museum of Fine Arts, until January 4, 2006, the Gund Gallery will feature Ansel Adams: Master of Black and White, which includes a fourteen-minute documentary featuring Adams. Adams appears to be an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift. He is down to earth, utterly unpretentious and avuncular. He has a child’s smile on a grandfatherly face.

For a great man, he does not act superior, but grateful for the unbelievable opportunity of being able to do what he loves and get paid for it. He is someone that you would want to be seated next to in a coffee shop, and if you did see him in an art gallery, you would not be afraid that he would sneer at you.

For Adams, art has a theological function: to interpret the daily miraculous aspects of physical and spiritual life. Adams is aptly named. Like Adam, he finds a way to embody the majestic wonder of nature, not by naming it, but by clicking his shutter. Adams said, “No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied—it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.” Adams’ photographs not only capture what was before his eyes, they embody the way that his photographic subjects made him feel.

Most art experts accurately describe Adams as being a brilliant technician. He was a man who mastered the use of filters and invented the Zone System, the technique of focused exposure, but it would be a mistake to believe that anyone with similar skills could use a camera and have this same effect. Adams noted, “Art…is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit.” Technology may accurately portray an image, but the photographer’s perspective conveys the spiritual beauty of the photographer’s subjects.

Because Adams did love his subjects, he created photographs that still remind the viewer of every human being’s desire to acknowledge something larger than them and to see things as they were meant to be seen. For example, Moonrise is a photograph of a Southwestern landscape, which included a town’s church and graveyard.

In this photograph, the ephemeral clouds have more substance than any mountain within the frame, and the moon illuminates each grave marker, cross and tombstone as if to suggest an otherworldly glow. Adams managed to briefly give his an audience a glimpse of the crossroads of life and afterlife. Even Adams noted about Moonrise, “Sometimes I do think I get to places just when God is ready to have someone click the shutter!”

Adams affirmatively answers in each photograph that art does matter. His photographs remind the viewer not to take life for granted. Adams not only depicted the majesty of landscapes, but also meditated on the daily wonders of a simple flower or the remarkable qualities of his friends.

In one photograph, he reflected on the human spirit of each companion: Georgia O’Keefe, and their guide, Orville Cox. He captured the pleasure of their company, O’Keefe’s delightful and impish spirit, Cox’s shy nature and their sense of belonging and delight while touring Canyon de Cheily, Arizona.

Ultimately, Adams’ photographs did not just depict an ideal, but a way of life for the venerable photographer. When viewers were captivated by his work, he explained, “I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the ‘affirmation of life’….Response to natural beauty is one of the foundations of the environmental movement.” His beliefs were not just confined to the imagery of the wild, but Adams made every effort to protect the Earth in his environmental advocacy.

Our adoration of Adams’ depiction of the majestic landscape of the west and the human spirit must be accompanied with actions of respect towards that majesty endowed to all creation.