Ansel Adams and the American landscape : a biography /

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) created some of the most influential photographs ever made; he was one of this century's leading exponents of environmental values. Writer and scholar Spaulding casts a broad net in this fine biography; it is a well-rounded portrait of the man, an analysis of his work and an exploration of the development of photography as a fine art. As a youth, Adams had rigorous piano training that proved invaluable in his career, giving him intensely developed work habits and an insatiable quest for technical excellence. Spaulding follows Adams through his meeting with Alfred Steiglitz and his early shows, his collaboration with Mary Austin and Georgia O'Keeffe, his long friendship with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (she collaborated with him on later books) and his deep involvement with the Sierra Club. A final, fitting tribute came a year after his death when a peak in Yosemite was officially named Mount Ansel Adams. Photos. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

It seems that every third family in America has an Ansel Adams (1902-84) poster on the wall, images that were difficult to make but easy to love. Adams's images portray a romanticized and unspoiled Western American landscape omitting track houses, immigrant laborers, open-pit mines, timber clear-cutting, and traffic jams created by recreational vehicles in our national parks. As a member of the purist f/64 group, he applied considerable technical knowledge to portray the beauty of simple, ordinary things, and he has had incalculable influence on the public's appreciation of such otherworldly concepts as our need for solitude, the sacredness of untouched wilderness, and the fragility of nature. This is not the first book examining Adams's life and the evolution of his aesthetics, but it does provide significant discussion of his family life, his conflicts with David Brower's increasingly aggressive Sierra Club, Adams's propaganda work for the war-time federal government, and his photography of the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar. Overall, independent scholar Spaulding has presented a highly readable account of Adams's life, including thorough notes and an excellent bibliography. Recommended for photography collections.‘Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.