Sensibly, Virginia insisted that Ansel give Stieglitz one more chance. His return visit to An American Place later that afternoon went even better than he could have dreamed. Bidding him to sit down, Stieglitz took Ansel’s portfolio, untied the three black ribbons that held it shut, and slowly examined each print. There was only one chair in the gallery, and Stieglitz was sitting on it. Finding no other option, Ansel lowered himself onto the radiator, trying to ignore the hot water coursing through its pipes. Whenever he tried to comment on one of the images, Stieglitz would glare him back into silence. Finally, Stieglitz tied the portfolio shut, paused, and then, with great thoughtfulness, untied it and began studying each print again. He gave the same careful attention to Taos Pueblo and expressed great appreciation for the elegant simplicity of both the design and the images.17 By now, Ansel’s bottom, still perched on the radiator, had been baked into corrugation. His discomfort was quickly forgotten, however, when Stieglitz, with a direct look, pronounced the work among the finest he had seen.18
Having fully relented, Stieglitz now expounded upon his theory of the equivalent, the centerpiece of his photographic philosophy.19 Years earlier, in his journal Camera Work, he had published an essay by Marius de Zayas on the 1911 Picasso show, in which the author had written that the artist’s intention was “that the picture should be the pictorial equivalent of the emotion produced by nature.”20 Stieglitz applied this idea to his own work, although its personal application had taken years to reach maturity.
Angered by a critic’s insinuation that half the power of his portraits sprang from the hypnotic spell he cast over his sitters, Stieglitz in 1922 determined to demonstrate that he could make important photographs of subjects over which he had no control—subjects that were there for anyone to use. That summer, he began photographing clouds in relationship to the earth. Later that year he exhibited Music: A Sequence of Ten Photographs and spoke of the images as being the visual equivalents of the symphony of sound he experienced in his mind while gazing upward: some clouds communicated the delicacy of violins and flutes, others the timbre of oboes, and still others the volume of brass instruments.21
The next year, Stieglitz let loose the earthly anchor and photographed clouds and sky without reference to land. To a friend he remarked, “Several people feel I have photographed God. May be.”22 For all that this might be their deepest goal, most artists would think it too grandiose, too egocentric to speak of such achievement. But not Stieglitz.
Stieglitz’s theory of the equivalent helped Ansel’s photographic dreams take flight. Beyond his straightforward shots of mountains and board fences, rocks and rusted ships, Stieglitz promised that Ansel could discover more if only he would put his emotions into the creation of each photograph. Stieglitz solidified the commitment first inspired in Ansel by Edward Carpenter, to reveal the greater reality that surrounds us, but of which too few are conscious. Ansel now believed that he, too, could capture this evanescence on film, as a proof for all to see, a glimpse of the intrinsic beauty that is life’s foundation.
Stieglitz came away from their afternoon together impressed by this very Western man and his work. If their differences were readily apparent, they nonetheless shared a deeper kinship: each was totally committed to the art of photography. Although he did not offer Ansel an exhibition, Stieglitz urged him to write and visit whenever possible.
Upon his return to San Francisco, Ansel began a faithful correspondence with Stieglitz that ultimately led to a warm friendship.23 Stieglitz was Ansel’s connection to the big-time world of art, but he was more than that, too: he was Ansel’s ideal. Stieglitz lived his life completely dedicated to art. He brooked no compromise either by himself or by his followers (for no one was considered a peer). Every artist that Stieglitz decided to promote was worshipful of him; anything less was treason. In that tradition, Ansel was a star. He truly idolized Stieglitz, fully embracing his philosophy as his own. In return, Stieglitz accepted the role of mentor.
In the greatest compliment he could have paid, Ansel now attempted to model his life after Stieglitz’s. In the late summer of 1933, he leased a second-floor space near Union Square in downtown San Francisco, at 166 Geary Street, and opened the Ansel Adams Gallery, devoted to the exhibition of fine art photography, painting, and sculpture, the same combination to be found at An American Place. This move must have seemed foolhardy to Ansel’s family and friends, and all the more so as it was during the depths of the Depression.
Although he faced a huge task in readying the gallery for its announced opening date, September 1, Ansel refused to even consider giving up the Sierra Club Outing. Depositing his nearly full-term wife in Yosemite, he bounded off into his mountains, leaving her father to cope with the situation. On the first of August, Virginia gave birth to their first child, Michael. It was a relatively easy birth, and her father stayed with her during most of the labor. She neither needed nor wanted anesthesia; when, at one point, her doctor told her it would be all right for her to scream, she calmly replied that she saw no need to. Without a touch of acrimony, she wrote to give Ansel the news of their beautiful, perfect son, “mailing” her missive with a hiker who was departing for the high country.24 In a few days’ time, an excited Ansel dashed back to the valley with a kiss for his forbearing wife. In a letter to Cedric full of busting buttons, Ansel proudly described his son’s violin fingers, so like his papa’s.25
Taking little time to consider his new bonds of family, Ansel insisted on an immediate return to San Francisco to prepare for his imminent gallery opening. The inaugural show, of works by Group f.64—the original seven plus Consuelo Kanaga—pulled in an enthusiastic San Francisco audience; nearly five hundred people attended during its two-week run.26
Finding cooperative artists proved troublesome, however. Strand, Stieglitz, and Charles Sheeler all declined his invitation to show their work. Strand responded that he felt exhibitions extorted the artist by providing free entertainment to an unworthy public, while Stieglitz refused because he said that he did not have enough prints to risk shipping even one across the country.27 Committed to showing only new work, Sheeler begged off because he had no darkroom in which to make prints, and the only three paintings he had done were already fully booked.28
In addition to his own photographs, Ansel showed work by photographers Edward Weston and Anton Bruehl, sculptor Ralph Stackpole, and painters Jane Berlandina, Jean Charlot, Marguerite Thompson Zorach, and William Zorach. Sales were pitiful. Ansel reported to Charlot that he had sold two oil paintings and two lithographs for a total of $135. Subtracting $46 for the expense of announcements and reproduction photographs and $29.66 for his commission, he rounded off the net total of $59.34 and sent Charlot a check for $60.29 After eight months, unable to make a go of it, Ansel gave up on the gallery.
His photographic career fared much better. Ansel’s first New York exhibition opened in November 1933 at the Delphic Studios, the site of Edward Weston’s premier New York solo show in 1930.30 Although the director of the gallery, Alma Reed, enthusiastically reported sales of eight prints for $120, Ansel never was paid any money; the sales just covered Delphic’s expenses for the announcements and framing. On the plus side, Ansel received his first review in the New York Times, which pronounced that “photography by Ansel Adams, a Californian, strikingly captures a world of poetic form. His lens has caught snow-laden branches in their delicate tracery; shells embedded in sandstone; great trees and cumulus clouds. It is masterly stuff.”31 Although brief, the notice could not have been more positive.
Ansel continued to proselytize on behalf of Group f.64 at every opportunity, finding a perfect vehicle when Camera Craft magazine hired him to write a series of four articles under the general title “An Exposition of My Photographic Technique,” beginning in January 1934. This represented a great victory for straight photography because Camera Craft had long been the platform of Group f.64’s archenemy William Mortensen. Ansel’s radical ideas warred page by page, month after month,
with Mortensen’s expositions on “Creative Pictorialism.”32 As uncomfortable as Ansel was to be in such close publishing proximity to the “Devil,” Mortensen must have felt assailed in his own castle by this man named Adams. Although he continued to pump out books, Mortensen saw his popularity and reputation as the greatest teacher of technique wane as Ansel’s waxed.
In April 1934, Ansel published an extended essay entitled “The New Photography,” in Modern Photography 1934–35. He began with a brief history of the medium and concluded by crowning its ultimate achievement (in his estimation): straight photography.33 Although he was taken to task for his less-than-precise version of the history of photography, in the main Ansel received high praise for his essay in a review by MoMA librarian Beaumont Newhall.34 His audience was growing.
Ansel’s next salvo was the publication of his first book on photographic technique, Making a Photograph, in 1935.35 In ninety-six amply illustrated pages, complete with a darkroom design, Ansel took the amateur by the hand and demonstrated how he or she could become a straight photographer. Serving as stunning examples for his readers, Ansel’s photographs had been finely reproduced, varnished to a high brilliance, cut out, and then individually glued in place. To this day, people mistake those reproductions for original prints. A delighted Stieglitz wrote to Ansel, “I must let you know what a great pleasure your book has given me. It’s so straight and intelligent and heaven knows the world of photography isn’t any too intelligent—nor straight either.”36 Along with the critical acclaim came some very welcome royalties: Ansel’s first check from the publisher totaled a pleasing $315.20.37
Nineteen months after Michael’s birth, on March 8, 1935, Anne Adams was born. Once again, Ansel was elsewhere, this time photographing snow scenes in Yosemite while Virginia stayed behind in San Francisco. Ansel cabled to express his love and congratulations; he planned to remain in the valley to finish the project but promised he would come home in a few days.38 He had no time for babies, even his own.
After a lapse of almost three years, Ansel headed back east in January 1936, ostensibly to testify in Washington on behalf of the Sierra Club, an opportunity that provided the critical financing for a trip that would prove pivotal. Ansel first stopped in New York, where he wanted to show Stieglitz his more recent photographs. On the evening of his arrival, Ansel luckily chose to go to the movies, where he spied O’Keeffe. After accepting a big hug from him—a departure from her normal reserve that shocked her companion, David McAlpin—she invited Ansel to come back with them to the apartment she shared with Stieglitz. McAlpin, a Harvard law grad and a Rockefeller heir, was an investment banker and served as a trustee of MoMA.39
Rarely empty-handed, Ansel arrived with his portfolio. Most likely, he was carrying such work as two very different still lifes, Burnt Stump and New Grass (1935), of brave new shoots of grass set against charred bark, and Americana [Cigar Store Indian] (1933), a composition formed of the random, bizarre items found in close proximity on a city street.40 The response from these three very important people was immediate, confirming Ansel’s belief that he was making the best photographs of his life.41
After leaving him hanging for only a few days, on Friday, January 17, Stieglitz offered Ansel his long-sought show, at An American Place the coming November. Ansel was ecstatic; planning for this event would be the focus of his entire year.
But his trip had just begun. Dr. Karl Bauer, director of the Zeiss Camera Company in the United States, presented Ansel with a new Zeiss Juwel three-and-a-quarter-by-four-and-a-quarter-inch camera and a Zeiss Double Protar lens, Ansel’s first important freebies. Bauer hoped, as would many other photographic manufacturers in years to come, that Ansel Adams would make some great photographs using his equipment. An excited Ansel crowed that it was the world’s greatest camera.42 In gratitude for the gift, he contributed testimonial articles for Zeiss Magazine.43
Ansel’s good fortune in New York was capped off by a dinner with Paul Strand, who showed him prints so dazzling as to render him speechless—a highly unusual condition for Ansel—and swearing that no words could do them justice.
On the way home, he stopped in Chicago, where the esteemed Katharine Kuh Gallery also requested an exhibition for November. Displays of such great modern painters as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Alexander Calder, and Emil Nolde had been mounted on that gallery’s walls. Kuh promised Ansel important introductions and some guaranteed jobs to enable him to return to Chicago during his show.
Ansel returned to San Francisco full of energy, ready for what he believed would be the best year of his life. Still, he did not have the luxury of concentrating solely on the coming exhibitions: there was now another mouth to feed. In demand as a commercial photographer, he was commissioned to do a book documenting Dominican College in San Rafael, California. Always on the lookout for more images for the approaching shows, he found one even in that assignment: White Cross, San Rafael was included among his work at An American Place.
Once again, nothing, not even Stieglitz, could cause Ansel to skip his annual July Sierra Club Outing. He invited his new photographic assistant, Patsy English, whom he had hired to help with his exhibits. Refusing to be left at home, Virginia insisted on going along; thankfully, Ansel’s parents were always ready to babysit their two grandchildren. The three joined two hundred others at the starting point: the village of Giant Forest, fifty miles east of Fresno in Sequoia National Park. One participant anticipated the trip as a “ticket to star-shine, moonshine, and crystal-shine” and was “excited to be armed with only the certainty of one’s own strength and well-being” (not to mention a hundred fully loaded mules).44
Ansel planned their course, and after a few grueling days of ever upward trails, the Outing party found itself in the lunar landscape of the High Sierra, above tree line with little vegetation to soften the earth’s skeleton for a man or woman in a sleeping bag. It was the duty of each Outing’s freshman members to build and maintain the nightly bonfire, and this year’s bunch, with naive zeal, produced a barely controlled inferno for their first effort. The recorder of the trip recalled that “everyone was toasted into a pleasant stupor, while Ansel, trapped between the ring of Sierrans and the fiery furnace, had to issue his trail directions on the trot . . . with his jeans threatening to go up in smoke at any moment.”45
Even though the trip was cursed with a bounty of rain, Ansel made six negatives that he would include in the American Place show. Four, in deference to the soft, cloud-filtered light, were studies of weathered wood, two of old ghost-town buildings, and two tree details.
Virginia loved the Outings almost as much as Ansel did; at thirty-four, she remained an intrepid climber, on this trip achieving the summit of Mount Whitney for the second time, along with 162 others. She had been one of the first women to ascend its eastern slope.
Ansel was never one for “racking up” mountains, as he put it. Preferring vantage points conducive to a heavy camera and tripod, he made a gentle, glowing photograph, West Slope of Mount Whitney, Sierra Nevada, bathed in the warm rays of the late-afternoon sun.46 This and an image of an explosive cumulus cloud dominating the Kern Plateau, entitled Clouds, Sierra Nevada, California, were two of only four landscapes exhibited at his Stieglitz show.47
Soon after his return from the Sierra, Ansel entered his darkroom in the basement of his parents’ San Francisco house and rarely left until the work for both the Stieglitz and the Kuh shows was completed. More than any other photographic artist of his time, Ansel championed the importance of print quality, and he was determined to make the most beautiful prints of his life for Stieglitz.
To that end, he painstakingly assembled the perfect ingredients, changing the printing paper he had used since 1931, Novobrome, to Agfa Brovira Glossy Double Weight. The new paper possessed more silver and thus offered a greater quality of light, producing bright, sparkling whites and more intense cool blacks.48 Variations of images were propped up, examined, and compared.49 Only the best survived.
Ansel trimmed every print with precision, then dry-mounted each onto very white, shiny Bristol Board. Attending to every detail, he had new labels commissioned in a plainly elegant design, proclaiming “A Photograph by Ansel Adams.” One was glued to the back of each print. He needed forty-five prints for Stieglitz and thirty-four for Kuh. Ansel had once bragged that if pushed, he could make three hundred prints in one day when working on a commercial project; it was a measure of his dedication to achieving the very best for these shows that it took him seven weeks to complete the requisite seventy-nine prints.
When Ansel shipped the American Place show off to Stieglitz on October 11, he was fully content. He wrote Stieglitz that with the making of each print he had summoned up the essential emotions he had experienced when he made the negative: method acting applied to photography. He believed these photographs to be more alive than any he had previously made.50
Every negative used for the American Place exhibition had been taken during the previous five years. Four had been in the Group f.64 show, and most were in the Group f.64 style: close-ups of battered wood, cemetery stones, and rusted anchors. Stieglitz liked imagery that reflected his own concerns and provided a sense of mood and place. For him the natural world was relevant only in how it related to man; he scorned the West and its scale-breaking grandeur. Mindful of this, Ansel selected only pictures that Stieglitz had expressed a liking for, or ones in a similar style. He was discovering that recognition by Stieglitz could be as confining as it had originally seemed liberating. The inventory of prints that Ansel shipped to Chicago was nearly identical to the one sent to New York, though for Katharine Kuh, he included three prints that did not go to Stieglitz, Monolith, Rose and Driftwood, Still Life, plus a three-panel, photographic screen of Leaves, Mills College, each panel measuring an impressive six feet two inches high and two-and-a-half feet wide.
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