Why do you think Ansel Adams is better known than William Mortensen?

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Ansel Adams has left his legacy with his photography and environmentalism. Fame came pretty late in his life during the 80's. Along with his spectacular work that started a movement with photography and preserving the environment, he also was a workaday photographer that did commercial work. I work at UC Davis and his work hang on the walls of the administration building Mrak Hall. I would say his work is prosaic and of course, technically competent. Before his fame, he would sell his prints for only $20 before Christies auction house sold a print for tens of thousands of dollars. I think he thought his photos wasn't worth that much back in the 80's. Back then, it cost as much as a house. I doubt if any of Mortensen's prints would sell for that much today. My view is the price what someone is willing to pay for your work has no bearing on it's value.

 

[CasperMarly]

Credit William Turnage who became Adams Business Manager in the 1970's and really pushed the Fine Art over Commercial work.
In 1972 Ansel did a TV commercial for Datsun pickup trucks. That got him known in American households. Add in his photo workshops
and freely given help to so many through the years.

 

[Vaughn]

I wonder if AA struck a chord with American's love of the grand landscape and Puritanical roots. Mortensen deal with subjects of lust and monsters. Some of his photographs are pretty erotic and grotesque. His photography may be too ahead of it's time. Photos of Robert Maplethorpe and Joel Peter Witkin are pretty accepted in the art world.

I think might be leaning too much on the puritan aspect, but then AA's images were far better suited for the Sunday papers...and Mortensen's photos were solidly of his time. They were not porn because he was an expert of scratching out/spotting out pubic hair. Which I have always thought a bit silly...but I was surprised to find that it was also my father's (b. 1922) definition between porn and Art. (the other standard was if it had a plinth in it, it was Art.)

But mostly, Americans love anything new...

Edited to add: I like the point made in the post above. Ansel gave a lot -- thus he also received a lot. He pushed others forward as much if not more than he pushed himself forward. Constantly. Thus others pushed him forward.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Probably should put it that Adams made photography more accessible to the average photographer.

Ansel democratized photography for those that managed to struggle through his writings to understand the Zone System. Modern films and developers have now allows a modified Zone System based on adjust the exposure techniques only. That has allowed the Zone System to work for roll film.

AA images look good on most office walls. Same cannot be said of what Mortensen did.

I think the main problem is that very few have been interested in Mortensen aesthethic, considered as "old fashioned", but a lot were and still are hooked by Ansel Adam's work.

I wonder if AA struck a chord with American's love of the grand landscape and Puritanical roots. Mortensen deal with subjects of lust and monsters. Some of his photographs are pretty erotic and grotesque. His photography may be too ahead of it's time. Photos of Robert Maplethorpe and Joel Peter Witkin are pretty accepted in the art world.

Because Mortensen's work were fanciful and grotesque pictorial, his technical advancements faded off from public view.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

I don't think Mortensen and Maplethorpe belong in same discussion.

 

[otto.f]

AA images look good on most office walls. Same cannot be said of what Mortensen did.

Right!
Btw there is no comparison at all between the two. Mortenson lived and worked in a time / spirit which is represented in Europe by Man Ray. Highly experimental, totally focused on symbolic content and not at all a perfectionist in the final presentation of the image. Art, and modern art in the sense that the message is what it’s all about . Adams is sort of the opposite: Craft. Perfectionism in the final result, the beauty of nature as it is, not directed at all on symbolic value of the image.

 

[Vaughn]

Why? Both were artists/photographers. Hard to contrast and compare otherwise.
And Mortensen moved to Laguna Beach -- the artist and gay center of Southern California...Maplethorpe would have fit right in to his scene if they had over-lapped in time/space. Oh, my! Can you imagine the collaboration that might have happen between the two? Might have created something that would have given AA a little more difficult to argue against.

Don't forget AA's quote, something like; "I'd rather see a fuzzy photo of a good concept than a sharp photo of a fuzzy concept."

AA was not about craft -- he was all about refining craft to service the concept. No more or no less than Mortensen ever was.

 

[Ariston]

I was not familiar with Mortensen (nor am I with many famous photographers). A cursory look over his work shows that it is a completely different genre from Adams. I don't know why they would be compared.

The more mainstream aesthetic (or way of thinking, for that matter) is always going to be the most recognized. That is pretty much the definition of mainstream.


EDIT: Mortensen's work reminds me of Poe and Lovecraft. Neither were widely recognized in their day. Mortensen's work does not appeal to me at all. If you cast a wide net, you catch more fish.

 

[eli griggs]

Mortensen, was too much the Trickster, Magician, and Illustrator, as well as a "Pornographer" with his Nudes, while Adams appealed to women and men alike, by showing nothing more (in the public eye) than what was American, Simple and The Ideal of a Nation, being overwhelmed by Invention, Science, Industry, Illusionist, Practicing Societal Manipulation and a Very Public ad hoc Herald of Rapidly Changing American Mores.

What appealed then, is still, if no, even more so today than in those years.

Given the Opportunity, I conger that most of us here on Photrio,com would also be more appreciated of Adams works for the Everyday Man and Woman, than Mortenson's set-ups for the Elitist, and Collectors Illusion.

Adams allows you and I to Place Ourselves in the Spacious Scene and to exmain, close up, the wonders of simply being out-of-doors, away from everything else, but what is lain out before us.

One of my Favorite Mortenson's photographs, which graced the cover of a 1980's "Camera Arts" shows his nude, pretty, dancer wife, in profile on tip-toes, reaching upward to a Peacock on a tall stand.

Where in that scene would any of us belong but as an welcomed intruder?

Now look at the other works of Mortenson, and ask yourself that same question and you will likely find there is no place for us but as a voyeur, peeking into the inside of some ones imagination and sometime, their Nightmares.

Both Photographers peek our interest, however, to those times and in eras afterwards, Adams 'Feels Cleaner' and Mortenson, well, is reserved for the private spaces in our Homes and Lives, where we can give attention to his beauty and his beast.

IMO.

 

[138S]

Timing. The type of work William Mortensen was doing had run its course in the public eye and it was time for photography to continue on. AA was at the right place at the right time, and had the talent and intelligence to be a unifying figure and take advantage of it...and take photography in a new direction. AA's vision has run its course, what is pure in today's photographic world? But no need to toss him in the rubbish heap, nor William Mortensen. Both are building blocks of today's newest work...whatever that may be.

+1

 

[Arthurwg]

AA hated WM and went to great lengths to have him excommunicated from the firmament. AD Coleman wrote about this.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

Right!
Btw there is no comparison at all between the two. Mortenson lived and worked in a time / spirit which is represented in Europe by Man Ray. Highly experimental, totally focused on symbolic content and not at all a perfectionist in the final presentation of the image. Art, and modern art in the sense that the message is what it’s all about . Adams is sort of the opposite: Craft. Perfectionism in the final result, the beauty of nature as it is, not directed at all on symbolic value of the image.

Sure, just move up a bit from post you quoted to see what I said.

 

[138S]

Why do you think Ansel Adams is better known than William Mortensen? Both have books on photographic aesthetics and techniques. Has “pure photography” won over Pictorialism?

Adams described the Zone System as "[...] not an invention of mine; it is a codification of the principles of sensitometry, worked out by Fred Archer and myself at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, around 1939–40."

Beyond the quality of Adam's work, we have to consider how photography was teached before and after ZS advenement.

ZS was crafted with Archer in 1939/1940, ok... but Visuaization is a genuine AA product from 1927 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith,_the_Face_of_Half_Dome).

Visualization was used yet when humanity was painting in the caves... and we can find Visualization usage in many powerful artists in every era. For example Michelangelo was telling that the sculpture was inside the boulder yet, and he only had to remove the layer or rock on it, so what he said is the he had the sculpture Visualized in advance.

IMO, this is the great factor that made AA famous influencer: teaching how easily adjusting the photographic process in order to nail the Visulization, and by the way instructing people to Visualize the final craft before shutter release. This recipe is unbeaten, it combines the core concept of the artistic creativity with an easy technical recipe that contains most of what is useful, and all that can be easily understood by anyone able to meter an spot and to develop film.

Materials have changed and ZS is not used in he same way, but Visualizing and later using the available resources to nail the craft is a timeless concept. This rocked then, it rocks today and it will rock in the future.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's all in how the stars aligned at a certain point in history. AA had one foot firmly into the budding Natl Parks movement right when the big interstates were bringing hordes auto campers to such places. He was a significant player in the conservation movement and Sierra Club, and his photos were extensively disseminated in relation to that. But he was also directly involved in the acceptance of photography as a fine art in major museums and galleries, with people like Nancy Newhall in turn promoting him. He was obviously also a method teacher whose concepts proved valuable to a whole subsequent generation of photographers. Then a number of his photos acquired a nostalgic especially democratic quality representing the good ole days of Americana, as if it were still partially pristine wilderness. But now a segment of the haute art community turn their noses up at the "rocks and trees" genre, as they champion their own inevitably doomed styles.

Mortensen had his own heyday. Just because it's now largely forgotten doesn't mean Pictorialism wasn't a big deal back then. Edward Weston did wonderful pictorial work, even if he later renounced that style. So did Steichen. Even AA experimented with soft-focus lenses. People don't dance the Charleston anymore either; but there was a time it was the rage.
But Mortensen was too distastefully edgy to be popular with the public. Clarence White filled that bill much better as a Pictorialist.

 

[138S]

Even AA experimented with soft-focus lenses.

Well, when he had the crappy Adon he had to experiment that, wanting it or not

 

[DREW WILEY]

I stood at the very spot of his most famous shot with that fuzzy lens a few years ago. I wasn't looking for it. But it's in a relatively remote meadow location where there are only so many dry spots not blocked by trees to place a tripod. The light there is utter magic. And nobody else around for many miles. AA himself went back there 20 years later, with better experience and equipment. But then in his 40's, he required a mule to carry his gear. But I, at nearly 70, had to be my own mule carrying a heavy pack with LF gear for two weeks. It was worth it.

 

[eli griggs]

Keep heart, it won't be too long before we can all pack kit into remote locations, using robots, like Boston Dynamic's "mule" which is mainly being made for the Army Infantry or Marines to do exactly that

After I win the big one tonight, I plan to order one and buy an 8" x 10" LF, just for kicks.

Cheers

 

[SchwinnParamount]

Adams did a lot of commercial work including helping Edwin Land develop Polaroid technology. As someone else said, his commercial work wound up in high visibility places aside from the shelves of the bookstores and the walls of various art galleries. I suspect the most important contribution that AA made were his images in support of the environmental movement. He is forever associated with the Sierra Club and the various fights they had to preserve wilderness. As the environmental movement picked up steam, AA was able to ride some pretty big coattails.
As I read through the posts on this thread, I see that Drew and a couple others beat me to the punch.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It didn't hurt that his father-in-law owned the gift shop concession in Yosemite Valley, Best Studios. I wasn't allowed in there because of all the little ceramic chipmunks and so forth set precariously on the edges of shelves precisely so that bratty kids like me running around would knock them over, and our parents would have to pay for those. But my older brother recalled when portfolios of ten AA prints sold there for $40 - four dollars a print! Those were probably printed by assistants; but still ...

 

[Vaughn]

I have a good friend who loved the AA Gallery. He was working for Curry in the 70's, and the AAG was a place he could go, sit in a comfy chair and read the books they were selling...they still have a good book selection, but no comfy chairs.

 

[ic-racer]

Never thought of a comparison between William Mortensen and Ansel Adams. Maybe William Mortensen and Angus McBean.

 

[ic-racer]

...or Ansel Adams and Ray Mortenson.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, Mortensen was something of a clown if he thought of himself as a Surrealist.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

"clown

Well, Mortensen was something of a clown if he thought of himself as a Surrealist.

"clown" ???? don't like him I suppose? To this day Mortensen can be viewed as pioneering love hate approach to photography.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Ansel and his friends mounted a force full and successful attack on Mortensen. The result was that Mortensen's reputation was badly damaged. The reputation never recovered.