Great works of art can bridge the gap between each of us and the eternal, and Ansel’s photographs are such transcendent expressions. By revealing our natural treasures, among them Yosemite and the High Sierra, Ansel placed the responsibility for their safety squarely in our hands. His photographs clearly show us that if the affairs of mankind have no cosmic significance, they nevertheless have earthly consequence.
Ansel’s afterimage burns brightly.
Ansel Adams and Mule, Sierra Nevada, c. 1930. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Lodgepole Pines, Lyell Fork of the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, 1921. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ralph Selby, Charles Hitchcock Adams, and Olive Bray, San Francisco, c. 1891 (Selby was the brother-in-law of Charles Adams). Allen & Hay Photo Studio
Lyell Fork of the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, 1934 Sierra Club Outing (Mt. Ansel Adams is the tallest peak). Photograph by Ansel Adams
Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake, Sierra Nevada, 1923. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, c. 1927. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1927. Photograph by Ansel Adams
The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, San Francisco, 1932. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Nevada Fall, Yosemite National Park, 1932. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams on 1927 and 1932 Sierra Club Outings. Photographs by Francis Farquhar
Frozen Lake and Cliffs (Half Frozen Lake Beneath the Cliffs of Eagle Scout Peak), the Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, 1932 Sierra Club Outing. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Skiing at Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, 1930. Photograph by Ansel Adams
In the Sierra, c. 1932 (from left: Unknown Adonis, Ansel, Virginia, unknown woman, Cedric Wright, and unknown woman). Hand-drawn halos courtesy of Cedric. Unknown photographer
Ansel Sitting on and Wearing the “Straddlevarious,” c. 1936. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Pine Cone and Eucalyptus Leaves, 1932 (from his 1936 An American Place solo exhibition). Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams Exhibition, An American Place, 1936. Unknown Photographer
Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer, at His Desk, An American Place, New York City, 1934. Photograph by Imogen Cummingham
Ansel Adams and Patsy English, 1936 Sierra Club Outing. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Ansel Adams Playing the Piano, at Home in Yosemite, c. 1940. Photograph by Rondal Partridge
Rose and Driftwood, San Francisco, c.1933. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, 1935. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams, c. 1940. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ansel with a Straight Print and a Fine Print of Moonrise, Adams’ Home, Carmel Highlands, 1981. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Winter Sunrise, the Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1943. Photograph by Ansel Adams
Ansel Photographing from Car Platform, Eastern Sierra Nevada, c. 1950. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Mt. Williamson from Manzanar, 1945. Photograph by Ansel Adams
“One Son of the Yonemitsu Family is in the U.S. Army,” 1943 (caption from Born Free and Equal). Photograph by Ansel Adams
“Our President Has Said that Every Loyal American Citizen, Regardless of his Ancestry, Should be Given the Opportunity to Serve his Country Wherever his Skills Will Make the Greatest Contribution, Whether it be in Industry or in Agriculture,” 1944 (caption from Born Free and Equal). Photograph by Ansel Adams
Nancy and Beaumont Newhall in Ansel’s Garden, San Francisco, May 1947. Photograph by Pirkle Jones
Edward Weston and Charis Wilson Weston at Pt. Lobos, 1945. Photograph by Imogen Cunningham
Ansel Cooking on his Car’s Tailgate, 1940s. Photograph by Cedric Wright
Portrait of Dorothea Lange in Texas on the Plains, c. 1934. Photograph by Paul Taylor
Virginia’s 80th Birthday Party, Adams’s Home, Carmel Highlands, January 1984 (from left: Michael, Virginia, Anne, and Ansel). Photograph by Jim Alinder
Sierra Club Board of Directors Meeting, c. 1960s (from left: Ansel, Richard Leonard, David Brower, Edgar Wayburn, and unknown woman). Unknown photographer
Ansel and Me in Yosemite, 1980. Photograph by Tom Zito
Moonrise’s 40th Birthday Party, 1981 (from left: me, Ansel, and Jim). Unknown photographer
Ansel Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter, the White House, 1980.
Ansel Meeting with President Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles, 1983. Photograph by Mike Evans
Ansel Adams, cover of Time magazine, September 3, 1979. Photograph by David Hume Kennerly
Ansel Printing The Tetons and the Snake River in his Darkroom, Carmel Highlands, 1983. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Ansel in His Darkroom, Carmel Highlands, 1981. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Since 1902 in 1982, Mike and Jeanne’s house, Fresno, 1982. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Ansel and His Half Dome 80th Birthday Cake, 1982. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Ansel Adams, February 1984. Photograph by Jim Alinder
Notes
Throughout the Notes section, the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, is abbreviated as CCP.
1. SAN FRANCISCO
1 Nellie Mulcare had been hired as Ansel’s nurse on June 17, 1902, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. Nancy Newhall, Notes about Adams Family History, CCP.
2 Gladys Hansen and Emmet Condon, Denial of Disaster (San Francisco: Cameron and Company, 1989), 13.
3 Gordon B. Oakeshott, “San Andreas Fault in the California Coast Ranges Province,” in Edgar H. Bailey, ed., Geology of Northern California (San Francisco: California Division of Mines and Geology, U.S. Geological Survey, Bulletin 190, 1966), 361.
4 Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, 13–15.
5 Notice by the Board of Public Works that the Adamses’ chimney had passed inspection, July 9, 1906, CCP.
6 Ansel Adams, interview on the history of West Clay Park, 1974, tape recording. Collection of Sue Meyer.
7 Nancy Newhall, The Eloquent Light (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 25–26.
8 Ibid.
9 William Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1986), 89.
10 Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 9.
11 Telegram sent by C. H. Adams from Green River, Wyoming, to Charles E. Bray in Carson City, Nevada, April 22, 1906, 5:05 p.m., CCP; telegram sent by C. H. Adams from Reno, Nevada, to Charles E. Bray in Carson City, Nevada, April 22, 1906, 8:01 p.m., CCP; note sent by J. M. McCormack on behalf of Charles E. Bray to C. H. Adams, April 23, 1906, CCP.
12 C. H. Adams’s pass through the lines in San Francisco, by order of the governor of California, April 23, 1906, CCP. Eventually the house was moved farther back on the land, on a new foundation. Ansel Adams interview.
13 James Alinder, “Ansel Adams: A Chronology,” in Melinda Wortz, Ansel Adams: Fiat Lux (Irvine, Calif.: The Regents of the University of California, 1991), 101.
14 Nancy Newhall, “Additions to Ansel Adams Chronology,” CCP.
15 San Francisco Directory, 1870 (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1870), San Francisco Public Library.
16 J. Alinder, “A Chronology,” 101.
17 San Francisco City Directory, 1886 (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1886), San Francisco Public Library.
18 William Issel and Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco, 1865–1932 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 132.
19 “Death Summons Another Pioneer,” undated obituary notice for William J. Adams, copied in undated typewritten notes by Nancy Newhall and in notes about the Adams family history, CCP. William Adams’s streetcar line was probably bought out in 1885 by San Francisco’s powerful Bi
g Four—Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington, and Mark Hopkins—who had all been merchants in Sacramento before moving to San Francisco, where they monopolized the city’s public transportation. Issel and Cherny, San Francisco, 1865–1932, 30.
20 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 22–23.
21 Anne Adams Helms, “Charles Hitchcock Adams,” The Descendants of William James Adams and Cassandra Hills Adams (Salinas, Calif.: Anne Adams Helms, 1999), 176–195.
22 Ibid. See also notes 1 and 2.
23 Virginia Adams, interview with James Alinder, August 26–27, 1994, Carmel, tape recording.
24 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 4–5.
25 Virginia Adams interview.
26 Issel and Cherney, San Francisco, 1865–1932, 66; and Helms, “Charles Hitchcock Adams,” The Descendants of William James Adams and Cassandra Hills Adams, 181. Ollie miscarried a son in 1897. This child was not buried at the family plot in the Cypress Hill Cemetery in Colma, California, which suggests that Olive may have miscarried relatively early in her pregnancy, though late enough that the fetus’s sex was evident. For the first three years of their marriage, Charlie and Ollie lived at Fair Oaks in Menlo Park. In 1899, they moved to 3049 Washington Street in San Francisco, which they rented for forty dollars a month, and then relocated to 114 Maple in 1900. Nancy Newhall’s notes for The Eloquent Light, CCP. The nickname “Carlie” is explained in N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 23.
27 Charles Adams to Ansel Adams, March 25, 1944, CCP; and Helms, “Charles Hitchcock Adams,” The Descendants of William James Adams and Cassandra Hills Adams, 177–195.
28 Ansel Adams interview.
29 Ibid.
30 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 23.
31 Following heavy rains, on December 11, 1995, a huge sinkhole suddenly appeared, swallowing up the Norfolk Island pine and the house next door, stopping just shy of Ansel’s former home.
32 Charlie was only wrong for less than one hundred years. That ground was indeed not safe. It was the house that disappeared in a 1995 sinkhole.
33 Ansel Adams, interview with Nancy Newhall, May 10 and 13, 1947, CCP.
34 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 13–14.
35 N. Newhall, “Additions to Adams Chronology,” CCP.
36 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 27.
37 Charles Adams, interview with Nancy Newhall, May 18, 1947, CCP.
38 Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), 121–130.
39 N. Newhall, Notes about Adams Family History, CCP.
40 N. Newhall, “Additions to Adams Chronology,” CCP.
41 Ansel Adams to Aunt Mary, August 21, 1911, transcribed by Nancy Newhall, CCP.
42 R. G. Aitken, “In Memoriam, Charles Hitchcock Adams, 1868–1951,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 63 (December 1951): 283–284. The credit given to C. H. Adams for the invention of the process of alcohol extraction from sawdust may not be deserved; there are some indications that he in fact secured the U.S. rights to a Swedish process.
43 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 40.
44 Helms, The Descendants of William James Adams and Cassandra Hills Adams, 184–191; N. Newhall, Notes about Adams Family History, CCP.
45 Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1978, 11. This interview was conducted in twenty-six sessions between May 12, 1972, and February 23, 1975.
46 Virginia Adams interview.
47 Charles Adams to Ansel Adams, October 8, 1912, CCP.
48 Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 41.
49 Aitken, “In Memoriam, Charles Hitchcock Adams,” 285.
50 F. J. Gould, ed., The Children’s Plutarch (New York and London: Harper & Bros., 1910).
51 These books, inscribed by Aunt Mary to Ansel, were in the Adams family library in Carmel Highlands. A. Adams, “Conversations,” 165. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
52 Brooks Atkinson, The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), xx.
53 Alfred Kazin and Daniel Aaron, eds., Emerson (New York: Dell, 1958), 56–57.
54 Emerson’s importance for Charlie was made clear to me by Ansel in many conversations we had over the years, and it was evident, as well, in those of his father’s books that were still in his possession.
55 Susan Jacoby, The Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013); “Robert Green Ingersoll,” Bulletin (San Francisco: April 20, 1896).
56 Robert G. Ingersoll, The Ghosts and Other Lectures (Washington, D.C.: C. P. Farrell, 1881).
57 “Robert Green Ingersoll.”
58 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 11.
59 Sue Meyer, interview with the author, September 12, 1995.
60 Ansel Adams interview.
61 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 28.
62 Charles Adams to Cassandra and Cassie Adams, May 17, 1914, excerpt transcribed by Nancy Newhall, CCP.
63 Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (Riverside, N.J.: Free Press, 1992).
64 Donna Ewald and Peter Clute, San Francisco Invites the World (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991).
65 Charles Adams to Ansel Adams, March 25, 1944, CCP.
66 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 28–29. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
67 Ewald and Clute, San Francisco Invites the World, 74; and Frank Morton Todd, The Mammoth Typewriter, The Story of the Exposition (New York: Putnam, 1921).
68 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 19–21.
69 Ben Macomber, The Jewel City (San Francisco and Tacoma: John H. Williams, 1915), 107.
70 Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964), 109.
71 Todd, “Books, Music, and Art,” The Story of the Exposition, 96; and James Alinder, “Ansel Adams, American Artist,” in Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), 8.
72 Ben Macomber, “Weird Pictures at P.P.I.E. Art Gallery Reveal Artistic Brainstorms,” San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine, August 8, 1915.
73 Bruce Altschuler, The Avant Garde in Exhibition (New York: Abrams, 1994), 68. In the Gallery of the New Art, Todd, The Story of the Exposition. A photograph of the Futurist installation at the Panama-Pacific Exposition appears in this book.
74 Todd, “Within the Place of Fine Arts,” The Story of the Exposition, 25.
75 Ansel Adams to Margaret O. Copeland, February 10, 1916. Author’s collection. My husband, Jim, bought this letter and crayon drawing from an antiques dealer in Maine and surprised me with it as a Valentine’s gift in 2012.
76 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 29.
77 Charles Adams interview, CCP.
2. YOSEMITE
1 J. M. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras (Boston: W. H. Thompson, 1887). The Spanish word sierra refers to one mountain range; Hutchings’s addition of the letter s is incorrect.
2 Donna Ewald and Peter Clute, San Francisco Invites the World (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991), 94.
3 Shirley Sargent, Yosemite: The First 100 Years, 1890–1990 (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1988), 10–12.
4 Linda Wedel Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources (Yosemite National Park: U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987), 2.
5 Alfred Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 10.
6 Quoted in Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras, 56–57.
7 Jim DaleDale Vickery, Wilderness Visionaries (Merrillville, Ind.: ICS Books, 1986), 65.
8 Paul Brooks, “Yosemite: The Seeing Eye and the Written Word,” in Ansel Adams, Yosemite and the Range of Light (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979), 19.
9 Runte, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, 12;
Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 22–23.
10 Sargent, Yosemite: The First 100 Years, 19.
11 Robert Earle Howells, “Yosemite, California,” Sunset, March 2014, 52–53; and John Flinn, “Yosemite Grant Set Aside Land for Park in 1864,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2014, 6.
12 Quoted in Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources, 53.
13 Brooks, “Yosemite: The Seeing Eye and the Written Word,” 18.
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