Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy

[Alex Benjamin]

At the Harry Ransom Center (Austin, Texas), August 31, 2024, to February 2nd, 2025

Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy

www.hrc.utexas.edu

From the website:

American landscape photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984) described his approach to picture-making as one of “visualization"—the photographic expression of what the environment looks and feels like to the artist. Adams put it this way: “The first step toward visualization—and hence toward expressive interpretation—is to become aware of the world around us in terms of the photographic image.”

Adams’s description of his creative process serves as the point of departure for this exhibition, which showcases the many ways that photographers have visualized the American environment. It begins with Ansel Adams, whose photographs of pristine nature—all pictured in razor-sharp focus, with subtle gradations of light and dark, and deep recessions of space—remain some of the most immediately recognizable environmental images of our time.

For Adams’s contemporaries, and those who have followed, his legacy looms large. His photographs have inspired environmental consciousness for many. But many of those influenced by Adams have chosen to photograph exactly what he left out of his visualizations: the impact of humans on the natural environment.

Visualizing the Environment: Ansel Adams and His Legacy

Exhibition curated by Dr. Steven D. Hoelscher, Faculty Curator for Photography, Harry Ransom Center, Stiles Professor of American Studies and GeographyGIS exhibition companion created by Stephanie Zeller, PhD student, Department of Geography and the EnvironmentAmerican landscape photographer...

storymaps.arcgis.com

 

[DREW WILEY]

What is the point of all those idiotic Google Earth pop-ups beside each image on the link? They don't add anything - they detract. Another desperate gimmick it seems. And some of those images are anything but "razor sharp", as the little article itself notes - they were softly printed on textured paper. I like the idea of displaying AA's earlier work, which could be just as poetic as his later photography; but it certainly didn't have the same technique yet. Nor did it self-consciously bear his stamp of "pre-visualization" or the Zone System yet.

Those peaks of the Ritter Range on the link were literally my home view growing up, but from the west side of the range instead of the east. So they have an especially nostalgic feel for me personally. Now nearly all the glaciers are gone; a few are barely hanging on. Relatively few people get into the west side; the eastern approach is more popular, but at least those big Club convoys with all their horses, axes, and tent cities are no longer permitted.

 

[warden]

What is the point of all those idiotic Google Earth pop-ups beside each image on the link? They don't add anything - they detract. Another desperate gimmick it seems.

You forgot to complain about the audio.

@Alex Benjamin Thanks for this, I'm enjoying the presentation and will come back to it. Interesting parallels between this and the other currently active thread about pinpointing the location of famous photographs. This takes it to another fascinating level!

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Interesting parallels between this and the other currently active thread about pinpointing the location of famous photographs. This takes it to another fascinating level!

That's what I also thought.

@DREW WILEY , I understand your point. But you're looking at this as a photographer, and one who knows Adams' life and work very well. This material was not made for you in mind. This is made to interest the general public—which includes photographers with lesser knowledge, but also geographers, environmentalists, etc.—who might never have heard, or only by name, of Ansel Adams. If a "gimmick" helps attract more people to Adams' work, as well as to those who came before and followed, and thus to enjoy photography in general, where's the harm?

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Cool! Thanks!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Other sleuths have actually walked to the locations of famous photographs and taken modern views of the same perspective. I use Google Earth too, but hardly find any charm in it worthy of a meaningful appreciation of someone's outdoor career. Just more contemporary want it all in an instant mentality. I have accidentally landed a number of times at the same spots as AA's tripod once did, but wasn't interested in duplicating his perspective - in fact, I often found something more interesting to me at a different angle of view. Sometime there are just certain boulders or logical flat spots which are obvious and convenient to shoot from.

All that area was practically my back yard - a very big back yard now encompassing three National Parks and at least 13 designated Wilderness Areas, plus a lot more de facto wilderness; and humans traveled that high country for easily the past 14,000 years or more, even when great glaciers filled the valleys. One gets a feel for the light which the casual intruder in a hurry does not. It takes quality time, not just a few clicks of a mouse. Besides, Google Earth 3D gives a very distorted rendition of scale and verticality, especially in steep terrain.

Ansel gets a lot of exhibition exposure, and it seems curators feel compelled to try to present him from some new angle, competing for attention. In this case, they obviously had a selection of his early prints to choose from, so could have promoted that in its own right, without needing a misfit accessory gimmick. It's like an esthetic clash, not a complementary example; and that's what annoys me. Busy digital noise versus soft quiet poetic little prints deserving attention for their own sake. It's like having a tuba in the room during a cello recital. I find it disrespectful.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

If you're interested in knowing the locations of the shots, the maps are interesting and helpful. When I toured the SW National parks, I used Google Earth to pick a lot of my photo spots in advance of going. Linked with Google navigation, it helped me plan the road tour as well as the photography. For an Easterner who never visited these areas, Google helped a lot.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Only the well known Yosemite shots in the link are "driveable", involving just short walks. The older locations are well into backcountry and require more serious effort to get to. All these web GPS location links and Utube virtual guided tours these days have become a curse on many formerly quiet places, and have ruined their solace with overwhelming herds of visitors trampling everything. Spots that once didn't see a visitor a month, or even in a year, now require reservation permits limited to 50 to 200 people per day. That's mainly the case with the Southwest. The High Sierra is more tightly regulated. That still leaves many options peripherally for vehicle access, both paved roads and unpaved, including 4WD tracks.

And frankly, there was a time when we locals resented encountering the huge horse convoys of that Club Ansel once represented, with their big tent villages, trail damage, and litter, and even horse races in fragile meadows! Those big heavily-furnished trips were meant to expose enough people at a time to a high-country experience so that it would prompt protection of significant parts of it. Well, that did serve its purpose at one point in time; but they kept it up well afterwards as if by special exemption. Now, thank goodness, that kind of thing is no longer allowed.

There are other areas Ansel reached as a backpacker prior to all that, represented in some of his early little prints - some of my favorite images of his - which are still relatively remote places to this day. I hesitate to mention specific locations. But his backpacking days were relatively brief, mainly only in his 20's. After that, and even during much of it, he used a pack mule instead. Then the era of leading big groups, and sneaking in a few shots in his spare time. Yosemite Valley was an exception. It's been a tourist destination ever since the 1860's. My babysitter as an infant was the first white woman ever there - she was over 90 when I was a child, so would have been around 7 yrs old when she saw the Valley for the first time. Within the overall boundaries of Yos NP there are indeed certain huge swaths which to this day get very little visitation; but it takes some real effort to get there. On my last trip into one such area, it was difficult to detect any evidence of man, other than obsidian chips left behind by ancient bighorn sheep hunters. No trails, no footprints, not even any cairn markers, no fire rings, no recognizable campsites, no detritus. That's the way it should be.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Only the well known Yosemite shots in the link are "driveable", involving just short walks. The older locations are well into backcountry and require more serious effort to get to. All these web GPS location links and Utube virtual guided tours these days have become a curse on many formerly quiet places, and have ruined their solace with overwhelming herds of visitors trampling everything. Spots that once didn't see a visitor a month, or even in a year, now require reservation permits limited to 50 to 200 people per day. That's mainly the case with the Southwest. The High Sierra is more tightly regulated. That still leaves many options peripherally for vehicle access, both paved roads and unpaved, including 4WD tracks.

And frankly, there was a time when we locals resented encountering the huge horse convoys of that Club Ansel once represented, with their big tent villages, trail damage, and litter, and even horse races in fragile meadows! Those big heavily-furnished trips were meant to expose enough people at a time to a high-country experience so that it would prompt protection of significant parts of it. Well, that did serve its purpose at one point in time; but they kept it up well afterwards as if by special exemption. Now, thank goodness, that kind of thing is no longer allowed.

There are other areas Ansel reached as a backpacker prior to all that, represented in some of his early little prints - some of my favorite images of his - which are still relatively remote places to this day. I hesitate to mention specific locations. But his backpacking days were relatively brief, mainly only in his 20's. After that, and even during much of it, he used a pack mule instead. Then the era of leading big groups, and sneaking in a few shots in his spare time. Yosemite Valley was an exception. It's been a tourist destination ever since the 1860's. My babysitter as an infant was the first white woman ever there - she was over 90 when I was a child, so would have been around 7 yrs old when she saw the Valley for the first time. Within the overall boundaries of Yos NP there are indeed certain huge swaths which to this day get very little visitation; but it takes some real effort to get there. On my last trip into one such area, it was difficult to detect any evidence of man, other than obsidian chips left behind by ancient bighorn sheep hunters. There are no trails, no footprints, not even any cairn markers, no fire rings, no recognizable campsites, no detritus. That's the way it should be.

Drew, as you suggested, most visitors stick to the main areas for first-time sightseeing. Most back areas are still left alone in isolation for diehard hikers like yourself. Interestingly, people like Adams who used his work to encourage the public to protect the environment also made them so attractive, that everyone wants to enjoy them. So naturally, they're congested. I hope you believe or could believe that these Nationally owned areas belong to all Americans to visit and enjoy and aren't the private reserves for just the locals. We Easterners pay our taxes too.

 

[AnselMortensen]

Shouldn't it be called:

"Previsualizing the Environment" ?

I'm just asking for a friend...

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan - Yosemite Valley was already being mauled back in horse days. John Muir at first actually ran a lumber mill there below Yosemite Falls for sake of the sprawling hotel. The resident Indians were forcibly driven out; big herds of cattle were in the meadows for sake of tourist beef. Then it became a State Park. The meadows higher up were being so severely sheep grazed, along with other egregious issues lower down, that eventually a small contingent of the US Army had intervene to impose a semblance of order. Now certain restrictions are in place again so the place doesn't get loved to death. Many summer days, Yosemite Valley is literally a smoke-filled city of 30,000 people. Previsualize that. If you want one of those AA classic print experiences, go there during a winter snowstorm instead.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan - Yosemite Valley was already being mauled back in horse days. John Muir at first actually ran a lumber mill there below Yosemite Falls for sake of the sprawling hotel. The resident Indians were forcibly driven out; big herds of cattle were in the meadows for sake of tourist beef. Then it became a State Park. The meadows higher up were being so severely sheep grazed, along with other egregious issues lower down, that eventually a small contingent of the US Army had intervene to impose a semblance of order. Now certain restrictions are in place again so the place doesn't get loved to death. Many summer days, Yosemite Valley is literally a smoke-filled city of 30,000 people. Previsualize that. If you want one of those AA classic print experiences, go there during a winter snowstorm instead.

I;ve only been to Yosemite once. I got lucky and got a hotel room in the valley calling for reservations only a few days before. Inspiration Point was, well, inspirational. Everyone should see it to to know what heaven must be like.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ansel and certain other concerned persons did have some say in where the roads and buildings were going to be placed, so that none of that was apparent in that famous view. But he was very upset when the Park insisted on blasting away a classic section of glacial polished granite at Olmstead Point for sake of the highway up to Tenaya Lake and Tioga Pass. It's an infamous curve for avalanches, and his proposed alternate route would have been even more dangerous. It's usually the last place safely cleared of a deep snow; and one year, the snowplow itself, and its driver, was swept off a cliff by an avalanche there. But there is a tremendous view turnout there too, where one can see the stunning sculpting of Cloud's Rest, and the backside of Half Dome.

 

[DanyB]

Adams is a real legend!

 

[DREW WILEY]

His greatest combination of enviro and photographic achievement was not at Yosemite, which already had National Park status, but further to the south with respect to Kings Canyon receiving Park protection. His shots stirred Congress to set it aside too. Kings canyon is a lot more rugged and inaccessible than Yosemite Valley, except for what is now a small drive-in portion at Cedar Grove. Much of it still remains devoid of trails. It consists of a number of canyons, including the deepest in North America (about twice the depth of Grand Canyon), and also the highest dome in the Sierra (Half Dome in Yosemite is the third highest), and many peaks over 13,000 and 14,000 ft high, thousands of high altitude lakes too.

I've spent many summers exploring that area, but would need another eight lifetimes to see everything. Kings Canyon is jointly administrated with Sequoia NP as SEKI, since the two Parks are adjacent, along with multiple designated Wilderness Areas. Both sections have experienced catastrophic forest fires in their lower elevations over the past decade, including the loss of about a third of the Giant Sequoia trees. So would-be visitors should alway check the SEKI website before planning a trip there.