Ansel Adams

by Mary Street Alinder

  Ansel returned to Yosemite and to the arms of the unspoiled, ever-patient, and welcoming Virginia. They traveled to Carmel for a brief getaway during which, on Easter, April 17, 1927, they managed to elude whatever chaperone they must have had and made love for the first time. Virginia was stricken with adoration. She discovered her own intense physical needs and yearned to be with Ansel all the time.23

  It was a momentous time in Ansel’s life in more ways than one. Just as those who had first gazed on Yosemite had been at a loss to describe it, so had Ansel been. Still hard at work on his first portfolio, set into motion in 1926 by Albert Bender, he knew that not one of his photographs yet communicated the deepest feelings he had for that landscape. If it is possible for anything to dominate such a spectacular valley, Half Dome does: it is Yosemite’s greatest jewel, an incomparable shape rising abruptly from the valley’s floor—its west-facing flank long ago sheared cleanly away, leaving it half missing and half there. The Ahwahneechee called Half Dome “Tis-sa-ack,” meaning cleft rock. John Muir referred to the peak as “Tissiack.” Its massive form measures three-quarters of a mile tall from the valley floor and four-tenths of a mile thick, with a broad top spreading across thirteen acres that culminates in the Visor, a granite ledge overhang.24

  With the deadline for the portfolio fast approaching, Ansel realized he must make the best possible photograph of Half Dome, one that revealed the essence of this matchless mountain. On Sunday, April 10, he achieved the biggest artistic breakthrough of his life: his quintessential image of Half Dome that he titled Monolith, The Face of Half Dome.25

  In the years to come Ansel declared that he knew in his mind’s eye the image he would make and it must be from the Diving Board, a rock slab on Half Dome’s shoulder that projects thirty feet out over the valley nearly 3,500 feet below. How had he known? He had been at that location at least twice before and was fully aware of the difficulty of reaching that place, especially in April with the snows of winter only partially melted. The last time he had been at the most just eighteen years old, a beginner in photography, and most likely without a camera, unless it was quite small. Monolith was such an abrupt change from anything else he had done. How could he have made two such giant leaps in one afternoon—the spare, yet commanding framing of Half Dome in the first exposure then the deep-red filter in the second and final exposure? Ansel confessed to ruining at least four of his twelve negatives that day through his own mistakes—overexposure, an ineptly placed plate holder, and blurred images from the unhappy combination of a stiff breeze and a telephoto lens fitted with a red filter that demanded a long exposure time.26 The entire purpose of that trip on that day was to make a picture of Half Dome worthy of his first portfolio. After so many sloppy technical errors, why did he approach Half Dome with only two remaining glass plates, unless he was completely confident of the image he was to make?

  Another print by Ansel has been discovered, sold at a photography auction in 2012. Titled Half Dome in Ansel’s hand on the print, it carries nowhere near the power of Monolith, but perhaps here is that first study that allowed him to return home, develop the negative, and make a print that demanded study of how to make a stronger image, as he had done with East Vidette.

  Ansel made Half Dome from Glacier Point, 3,214 feet above the valley floor, a position that provided a panoramic view to the east including Half Dome, rising 1,500 feet higher, and the snowy Sierra Nevada beyond.27 There he had set up his six-and-a-half-by-eight-and-a-half-inch Korona, an early twentieth-century view camera that required glass-plate negatives rather than sheet film that was becoming available, and attached his Turner Reich triple convertible lens. A very versatile lens, it had three groups of elements that could be used to provide different focal lengths. The three groups combined gave a normal focal length of ten-and-a-half inches, the rear element alone, eighteen inches, and the front element, twenty-four inches. Since Glacier Point is quite some distance away from his chosen subject, to fill the negative with Half Dome, he used the twenty-four-inch element which required it be placed behind the shutter where the rear element had been. He had to stretch the camera bellows a full twenty-four inches from the film plane to get the image in focus and the telephoto effect he desired.

  Ansel gave this possibly unique print of Half Dome to Albert Bender. Ansel must have been proud of it, surely he would bring only what he considered his best efforts to his very important patron. But Half Dome does not communicate Ansel’s great passion for this fabled place. A simple study of forms and contrasting tones, the great rock visually recedes, its face still in shadow, its backdrop a massive mountain blanketed in winter white, and all surmounted by a blank, unfiltered sky.28

  Ansel realized he must get physically closer to Half Dome, and that place would be the Diving Board which would provide both a panorama to the west and a tremendous near view of Half Dome’s towering, sheer vertical western wall. He invited Virginia and Cedric, along with two other friends on the full-day journey. Traditionally Yosemite Valley locals would head out on the trails each spring to be the first that year to achieve Glacier Point, the top of Half Dome, or the Diving Board. It was considered a newsworthy event. This was no relatively easy hike, but rather a rigorous scramble (as they fondly termed such challenging excursions), much of it free of trails though not of snow. For traction, the others relied on the stickiness of the soles of their hiking shoes, while Ansel swore by his basketball shoes.

  They climbed up to the base of Nevada Fall via the Le Conte Gully, a steep crack in the dark granite that was extremely cold and definitely dangerous but the most direct route to their destination. A few years earlier, on a trip to this treacherous place with Uncle Frank, Ansel had thought to himself that there were pictures to be made here. On a second occasion, in 1920, Ansel had nearly died climbing down from the Le Conte Gully when his hiking companion slipped to the very brink, saved by a last-minute grasp of a small tree. Under Ansel’s calm direction, both men took off their shoes and socks. Ansel slowly shuffled barefoot atop the tilting granite to link belts with that of his friend. Somehow together they crossed the remaining thirty-five treacherous feet to safety. Thankfully, Ansel had not been carrying a large camera, but his comrade, a painter, lost all of his drawings.29

  On this April 10, 1927, adventure, one of the group of five was Arnold Williams, a professional photographer employed by Yosemite Park and Curry Company. His account of their trip, illustrated by his own photographs, appeared in various newspapers.30 In one picture Ansel and Virginia posed as his models enjoying the view of the entire valley before them. In another, the small figure of Virginia is seated on the ground, her back leaning casually against a pine tree. He noted:

  We started from the floor of Yosemite Valley by the Glacier Point long trail. A short distance up the trail we took the steep climb toward Sierra Point, leaving the latter trail about one-half way up. From this point we were away from all beaten trails until our return late in the evening to the trail near Vernal Falls.

  The day was excellent for picture making. Each member of the party had opportunities galore to excel their previous efforts in securing unusual as well as attractive views of Yosemite Valley, the canyon’s rim and the face of Half Dome. We had many thrills en route to the Diving Board but were well repaid for our efforts by the pictures secured.31

  Compounding the arduousness of Ansel’s journey was his backpack, which contained the same Korona view camera he had used to make Half Dome, a couple of lenses and filters, but just a dozen Wratten Panchromatic glass plates. A heavy wooden tripod was tied on to the backpack with rope. He was a lanky twenty-five years old, six feet tall, and hardly strapping.32 He wore a well-seasoned leather jacket, Levi’s, sunglasses, and a snappy fedora.33 Ansel stopped to photograph as they climbed, using a long-focus (telephoto) lens to rein in distant Mount Galen Clark.34 Virginia, a courageous climber able to keep up with, and sometimes surpass her male companions, carried a motion-picture camera; she was clothed in hiking pants, a heavy
sweater, and a small-brimmed hat.35

  They arrived at the Diving Board only to find the sun too high and Half Dome still in shadow, as it had been when he made Half Dome. This time he waited for the light. They ate lunch and Ansel made several more exposures, including a charming image of the distant, tiny figure of the intrepid Virginia standing on the end of the Diving Board, with thousands of feet of air beneath her.36 An amazing movie, less than two minutes long, part shot by Virginia and part by one of the other hikers, shows how treacherous was their journey, a foolhardy escapade, but also how fantastic were the views of Half Dome.37

  Ansel was left with only two remaining glass plates to make the image that had been the reason for this journey. At two-thirty, as light from the westward-drifting sun began directly to illuminate the face of Half Dome, he focused his Korona, which was fitted with a slightly wide-angle Tessar lens and a K2 yellow filter to reduce the atmospheric haze and render a light gray sky. After determining the exposure, he set the lens, inserted the glass-plate holder, removed the dark slide, and then squeezed the cable release.

  Ansel’s epiphany occurred after he made that exposure. Perhaps inspired by one of Carpenter’s maxims, “The object of the Fine Arts is to convey an emotion,”38 he realized that the negative he had just made would not contain the information needed for the finished print he saw in his mind’s eye, one that would communicate the powerful emotions he felt in Half Dome’s presence.39 He later termed this concept visualization—the notion that the photographer should know how the finished print will look before the negative is even exposed. Visualization became the new cornerstone of his photographic philosophy.40

  Ansel had brought with him a deep-red Wratten No. 29 filter purchased two years earlier. Its effect, he knew, would be to greatly increase the tonal contrasts to quite dramatic effect: blackening skies while increasing the apparent brightness of snow. Ansel now removed the yellow filter from over the lens and replaced it with the deep-red filter. He increased the exposure time to five seconds and exposed his last glass plate. With this one act, Ansel stepped beyond the traditional photographic boundaries of the day. The sky was no longer light and bright as it actually appeared; instead, it became a black velvet background for the smooth outline of the shattered, flat-planed face of Half Dome, rising majestically above its snowy shoulders. Looking at this image, we see Half Dome not with our own eyes but through Ansel Adams’s soul.

  This was hardly the first time Ansel had skewed the scene before him. Various pictorial conventions, such as the soft-focus lens and the bromoil print, certainly changed reality as well, and a case in point is his soft-focus 1921 print A Grove of Tamarack Pine (later entitled Lodgepole Pines). His whole life long, Ansel had a soft spot in his heart for this picture and the memories it held. The soft-focus lens refracted the highlights, producing a glowing luminosity that captured the mood of a magical summer afternoon,41 but in adopting this technique, Ansel surrendered the most basic quality (and strength) of photography: the ability of a lens to provide an image of acute sharpness.

  In the world of straight photography toward which Ansel was moving, filters were prescribed only for making subtle contrast corrections. Ignoring those rules, Ansel instead employed the deep-red filter to radically transform his image from day into night. The historian Frederick R. Karl asserts that “any artist hoping to be Modern must develop beyond influences, must leap into unknown territory which then becomes his. That ‘leap’ which the artist is able to make becomes his membership card in the avant-garde.”42 Ansel had probably been able to make the biggest leap in his creative lifetime because of what he learned from that first, simpler image, Half Dome.

  Monolith is Ansel’s most significant photograph because with this image he broke free from all photography that had come before. Nothing in it smacks of Pictorialism, or of Stieglitz, Strand, or Edward Weston. With its extreme manipulation of tonal values, it was definitely beyond the dicta of straight photography; this was a new vision, and it was his. In every sense of the word, he was now an important artist, with the concept of visualization representing his breakthrough.

  Within a month of making Monolith, Ansel ceased all mention of a musical future in his correspondence. Years would pass, however, before he would dare permanently to venture so far away from the “straight” path; perhaps this photograph scared him, both in its strength and in the implication of where it could take him in photography.

  Ansel came to the idea of visualization on his own, though in 1922 Edward Weston had hinted at the same theory in a speech before the Southern California Camera Club, saying, “I see my finished platinum print on the ground glass in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.”43 These words were not published until 1980, but the idea, which Weston would later term pre-visualization, was nonetheless in the photographic wind. Ansel can be credited with the first published definition of visualization, written in April 1934 for Modern Photography 1934–35: The Studio Annual of Camera Art. Before exposing the negative, he explained, “the photographer visualizes his conception of the subject as presented in the final print.”44

  During that consequential day-hike to the Diving Board, Ansel had secured three images for the impending portfolio, Monolith, Mount Galen Clark and the one of Virginia, entitled On the Heights. The excursion had proven so successful that two weeks later, on Sunday, April 24, the group of comrades took off on another challenging hike, this time determined to be the first that year to climb the repetitive switchbacks of the Four Mile Trail from the valley floor to Glacier Point.45 At Glacier Point, where the drifts were up to eight feet high, Ansel set up his tripod, its legs sunk almost all the way up in snow, and screwed the Korona view camera in place. The result was another strong photograph for the portfolio, From Glacier Point, with Half Dome in three-quarter profile dramatically framed on the top and left side by the dark silhouette of a tree. When they reached the small stone shelter at the apex of Glacier Point, Arnold Williams again used his friends, posing a very cute Virginia in her knitted Nordic cap and argyle sweater next to the fedora-topped Ansel and Cedric’s handsome profile seen under bright sunshine.46

  In addition to these four, Ansel selected fourteen other images for the portfolio, most made during his trips to the Kings River Canyon Sierra. All were from glass plates, save one on film. Glass plates reeked of the nineteenth century; by now most photographers had switched to sheet film, with the light-sensitive emulsion coated on a sturdy piece of cellulose acetate, but for several years to come Ansel would remain convinced that glass plates produced better negatives.47

  The portfolio was at last taking shape. Albert engaged the Grabhorn Press, staffed by world-respected designers and fine printers, to create an elegant presentation for the photographs. Black silk lined with gold satin was chosen for the portfolio covers, with the name embossed in gold on the front. A buff-colored, rough-textured, handmade paper folder encased each print, with the title typeset in black.48

  Convinced that few people other than Bender’s contacts would buy a portfolio if it was described as containing photographs, Jean Chambers Moore, the publisher, insisted on a different name. She was probably right: no market then existed for photographs as art. They christened the portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. The name was derived either from Parmelia, a genus of lichen, or, as Ansel later claimed when asked what it meant, from “nothing. The publisher didn’t want to use the word ‘photograph,’ so she concocted this little kind of a bastard combination of Greek terms from black—‘melios.’ I don’t even think that is an accurate use of the term, but she liked it, so it was used.”49 Ansel later considered his own abandonment of the word photograph cowardly, and he rued the day he was talked into using the word Sierras. In Spanish, sierra is a plural form meaning one mountain range; the added s denotes several ranges and as used here is incorrect.50

  Ansel made all the Parmelian prints on Kodak Vitava Athena Grade T Parchment, a cream-colored, gelatin-silver paper measuring twelve by
ten inches, that is translucent when held up to the light. It was available commercially from 1925 to 1928. Formed of intense blacks with modest tonal separation, the silver image appears to sit within the matte, slightly textured paper, rather than on top of it, as would be the case with modern, glossy stock. This choice of paper cast a Pictorialist pall over the sharp focus of seventeen of the eighteen prints. (The exception is the soft-focus Grove of Tamarack Pines.)

  With the publication of Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras in August 1927, Ansel’s career as a photographer looked both viable and appealing.51 In the opinion of the august Professor LeConte, Ansel’s portfolio succeeded: “By keeping to a simple and rather austere style, his prints assume a dignity and beauty which is not generally conveyed by photography.”52 Although Ansel later remembered that he completed about a hundred sets, some were destroyed in a warehouse fire, leaving approximately seventy-five that were sold and delivered.53 Their sale at fifty dollars apiece grossed him about $3,750, a handsome sum in 1927, even after the expenses of paper, processing, packaging, typography, and production were deducted. For those with less abundant finances, Ansel also offered individual Parmelian prints at five dollars apiece. Over the next three years, from the spring of 1927 to the spring of 1930, he sold 1,943 photographs.54

  Forever cavalier toward Virginia’s feelings (with their Carmel tryst, she believed she had made the ultimate commitment), Ansel continued to come and go as he pleased, soon embarking on his first trip to the Southwest, with Albert Bender. Virginia kept her spirits up by entertaining Cedric; fleeing to Yosemite following the disintegration of his first marriage, he stayed with the Bests and endeared himself to the lady of the house, who came to value him as a close friend.55 When her period (which she code-named Grandmother, the slang term commonly used at the time) was late, Virginia confided in Cedric. Although it was during Prohibition, he secured some whiskey that they hoped would ensure a visit from Grandmother, which at last arrived.56