74 N. Newhall, Eloquent Light, 165.
75 Alfred Stieglitz to Ansel Adams, December 22, 1938, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 111; Georgia O’Keeffe to Ansel Adams, December 22, 1938, CCP.
76 Francis Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946; reprint 2007). This is in its fifteenth printing. Francis Farquhar, “Sierra Nevada by Ansel Adams,” Sierra Club Bulletin 24, no. 3 (June 1939): 140. Courtesy of the Farquhar family.
11. PROGRESS
1 Beaumont Newhall, Focus: A Life in Photography (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1993), 57–58; Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, February 7, 1939, Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 113; Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, February 14, 1939, in Alinder and Stillman, 113–114.
2 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment” [unpublished manuscript], 26–27.
3 B. Newhall, Focus, 57–58.
4 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, 63.
5 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 43.
6 Matthew S. Witkovsky, foto, Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2007), 50–60, 106, 121, 238; “Vision in Motion: The Photographs of László Moholy-Nagy,” The J. Paul Getty Museum Calendar, summer 1995.
7 László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1965), 177.
8 Krisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985).
9 László Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist (New York: Wittenborn, 1946), 72.
10 Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 28.
11 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 38.
12 B. Newhall, Focus, 56; Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 194–195.
13 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 39–40.
14 Ibid.
15 B. Newhall, Focus, 57.
16 Ibid., 56.
17 James R. Mellow, Walker Evans (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 255–304; Walker Evans, American Photographs, 2nd Edition (New York: errata editions, 2011).
18 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, November 4, 1938, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 108–111.
19 Belinda Rathbone, Walker Evans: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 39–40.
20 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, October 2, 1939, CCP; Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, October 2, 1939, CCP.
21 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, July 29, 1939, CCP.
22 Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, August 10, 1939, CCP.
23 Virginia and Ansel Adams, Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley (New York and London: The Studio Publications, Inc., 1941).
24 Virginia and Ansel Adams, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1940); Virginia and Ansel Adams, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1963).
25 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 408–409.
26 “Checklist for the Exhibit, Recent Photography of Ansel Adams,” San Francisco Museum of Art [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art], September 19–October 15, 1939, museum files.
27 Alfred Frankenstein, “Three Men and a Master,” San Francisco Chronicle, “This World” section, October 1, 1939, 22.
28 Jack James and Earle Weller, Treasure Island, “The Magic City,” 1939–1940: The Story of the Golden Gate International Exposition (San Francisco: Pisani Printing and Publishing Company, 1941), 3.
29 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 114.
30 Ibid. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
31 Ansel Adams, A Pageant of Photography (San Francisco: Crocker-Union, 1940), unpaginated.
32 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 114. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
33 James and Weller, Treasure Island, XLIV.
34 Beaumont Newhall, “Photography as an Art,” in A. Adams, A Pageant of Photography.
35 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 396. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.
36 Ibid.
37 V. and A. Adams, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley, 102.
38 Ansel Adams to Arno B. Cammerer, Director, National Park Service, October 2, 1939, Yosemite National Park Research Library.
39 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 71–72.
40 “The U.S. Camera Yosemite Photographic Forum,” U.S. Camera 1, no. 9 (April–May 1940): 49–60.
41 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 94.
42 Ibid., 96.
43 Ibid., 98.
44 Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 22–27.
45 I witnessed Ansel’s last printing of Surf Sequence in 1982.
46 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 100.
47 Ibid., 101–102.
48 Ibid., 102.
12. A DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY
1 Beaumont Newhall, Focus: A Life in Photography (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1993), 64.
2 David McAlpin to Ansel Adams, September 7, 1940, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), 119–120.
3 B. Newhall, Focus, 65; Nancy Newhall, “The Enduring Moment” [unpublished manuscript], 124.
4 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, September 9, 1940, CCP.
5 Nancy Newhall, “The Photographer and Reality” [unpublished manuscript, ca. 1951], 6. Beaumont Newhall generously allowed me to make a copy of this manuscript.
6 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 124–141.
7 Ibid., 145.
8 David H. McAlpin, “The New Department of Photography,” The New Department of Photography (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1940), 3.
9 B. Newhall, Focus, 65.
10 “Checklist,” The New Department of Photography, 6–7.
11 Howard Bossen, Luke Swank, Modernist Photographer (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 3–72.
12 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 140.
13 B. Newhall, Focus, 65.
14 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, January 1, 1941, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 123–124.
15 Time magazine, January 6, 1941.
16 Tom Maloney, “Museum of Modern Art’s Photo Department,” U.S. Camera 1, no. 14 (February 1941): 28, 82.
17 Ibid.
18 Nancy Newhall, “Alfred Stieglitz: Notes for a Bibliography,” in From Adams to Stieglitz (New York: Aperture, 1989), 97. Copyright Nancy Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Estate, courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
19 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 142.
20 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, March 4, 1941, CCP.
21 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 163–164.
22 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, 353–354.
23 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 172–173.
24 Ibid., 176.
25 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, July 22, 1941, CCP.
26 John Pultz, “Ansel Adams and Harry Callahan: A Case Study of Influence,” in Michael Read, ed., Ansel Adams: New Light (San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1993), 43–49.
27 Quote from workshop participant Don Shapero, ibid., 45.
28 Ibid. For visual comparisons of Surf Sequence (1940) to Callahan’s Highland Park, Michigan (1941), and the below-mentioned Adams image Grass and Water, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park (1935) to Callahan’s Weeds in Snow (1943), see pl. 10–13.
29 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 179–180.
30 Maloney, “Museum of Mode
rn Art’s Photo Department,” 28.
31 N. Newhall, From Adams to Stieglitz, 101.
32 Ansel Adams to Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, October 26, 1941, CCP. An abridged version without his remarks on the death of their baby is reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 131–133.
33 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 188.
34 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 351–352.
35 Ansel Adams to Edward Steichen, June 1942, in N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 207.
36 Ken Conner and Debra Heimerdinger, Horace Bristol: An American View (San Francisco: Chronicle Books), 1996.
37 Ansel Adams to Nancy Newhall, 1943, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 143; Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 257.
38 Ansel Adams, Half Dome and Cannons, Yosemite National Park (ca. 1943), reproduced in A. Adams and M. Alinder, Autobiography, 258.
39 “Exhibitions, Photography Center, American Photographs at $10, December 3, 1941–January 4, 1942,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 2, no. 11 (October–November 1943): 14–16.
40 Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949), 85.
41 Ibid., 89–90. Copyright Beaumont Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Estate, courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
42 David Scheinbaum, interview with the author, October 3, 1995.
43 William H. and William N. Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (New York and London: Norton, 1986), 170–182.
44 B. Newhall, Focus, 68.
45 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 199; B. Newhall, Focus, 68.
46 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 199.
47 B. Newhall, Focus, 71–97.
48 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, August 18, 1942, CCP; N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 212.
49 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 212.
50 Ansel Adams to Nancy Newhall, September 14, 1942, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 137–138.
51 Ansel Adams to Nancy Newhall, September 14, 1942, in N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 214.
52 B. Newhall, Focus, 137.
53 Edward Steichen, A Life in Photography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), unpaginated.
54 “Exhibitions, Photography Center,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 2, no. 11:16.
55 Edward Alden Jewell, “Road to Victory,” New York Times, May 21, 1942, reproduced in Grace M. Mayer, “Biographical Outline,” in Steichen the Photographer (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), 73.
56 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, June 3, 1942, M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 134.
57 Art in Progress (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1944). Exhibition catalog.
58 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 301.
59 A portrait of Stieglitz made that day is reproduced in Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: Classic Images (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1986), pl. 18. One of Ansel’s photographs of Nancy and Stieglitz from that afternoon is reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 159.
60 Nancy Newhall to Beaumont Newhall, June 7, 1944, quoted in B. Newhall, Focus, 105–106.
61 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 254.
62 Nancy Newhall to Beaumont Newhall, June 4, 1944, quoted in B. Newhall, Focus, 120. Copyright Nancy Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Estate, courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
63 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 256–257.
64 Ibid., 261, 264.
65 Ibid., 262.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., 263.
68 Ibid., 271.
69 Ibid., 273.
70 A. Adams, “Conversations,” 354–355.
71 “Ansel Adams Teaches,” The Art Digest, February 1, 1945, 14.
72 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 296.
73 Ansel Adams to Beaumont Newhall, February 9, 1945, CCP.
74 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 297.
75 Ibid., 301.
76 Ibid., 306.
77 Clifton Daniel, ed., Chronicle of the 20th Century (Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1987), 592.
78 B. Newhall, Focus, 143.
79 Peter C. Bunnell, interview with the author, November 5, 1995. Bunnell is the McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art Emeritus at Princeton University.
80 B. Newhall, ibid., 149.
81 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, February 23, 1946, quoted in B. Newhall, Focus, 373.
82 Ansel Adams to Beaumont Newhall, February 28, 1946, quoted in B. Newhall, Focus, 378.
83 Beaumont Newhall to Ansel Adams, March 7, 1946, M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 167–168. Copyright Beaumont Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Estate, courtesy of Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
84 N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 382.
85 Bunnell interview.
13. MOONRISE
1 Fine reproductions of Moonrise are easy to find, from the laser-scanned, duotone poster to plates in many of Ansel’s books.
2 Marty Esquivel, “Moonrise over Hernandez,” New Mexico, October 1991, 84–89.
3 Ansel Adams with Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1985), 382.
4 Peter Wright and John Armor, The Mural Project (Santa Barbara: Reverie Press, 1989), iv.
5 Ansel Adams, “Photo-Murals,” U.S. Camera, November 1940, 52–53, 60–61, 70–72.
6 Ansel Adams, Fresh Snow, Yosemite Valley, California, is reproduced in Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, ed. Andrea Stillman (Boston: Little, Brown, 2007), 294. Ansel made only thirteen screens; they are very special and rare.
7 Hiring Card for Ansel Adams, Yosemite National Park, Calif., by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Yosemite National Park, October 14, 1941, Yosemite National Park Research Library (hereinafter YNPRL).
8 Nancy Newhall, “The Enduring Moment” [unpublished manuscript], 188.
9 Virginia Adams, interview with Nancy Newhall, May 12, 1947, CCP. This has also been confirmed by a number of friends and colleagues of Virginia and Ansel’s from that time. Virginia told me that she had fallen in love with Ted Spencer but the complications of her marriage and his, and their children, made their relationship impossible.
10 Notes by Nancy Newhall for “The Enduring Moment,” CCP.
11 Virginia Adams to Ansel Adams, September 20, 1941, Virginia Adams Collection.
12 Ansel Adams to Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, October 21, 1941, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), 131–133; N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 188.
13 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 272–273.
14 Ansel Adams to Virginia Adams, October 28, 1941, Virginia Adams Collection.
15 Ansel Adams to Newton Drury, October 20, 1941, quoted in N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 182.
16 A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 273.
17 Ansel’s first version had ten zones. In 1980, with the publication of The Negative, he changed to eleven zones, roman numerals 0–X, providing a middle Zone V, and the number of Ansel’s car license plate.
18 Ansel Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 40–43.
19 Ansel Adams to Virginia Adams, November 1941, Virginia Adams Collection.
20 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, 380–381; A. Adams with M. Alinder, Autobiography, 275–276.
21 Photo Judge: Lt. Comdr. Edward Steichen, U.S.N.R., U.S. Camera, 1943, T. J. Maloney, ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pe
arce, 1942), 88–89.
22 Art in Progress (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1944), 147.
23 Registration card for the Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, #688.43.
24 Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, January 10, 1943, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 141.
25 A few other very early Moonrise prints made before 1948 still exist.
26 Ansel Adams to Nancy Newhall, December 17, 1948, in M. Alinder and Stillman, Letters and Images, 200.
27 Mia Fineman, Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), 35–37. Photograph of Ansel Adams with Straight and Fine Print of “Moonrise,” 1981, by Jim Alinder, Fig. 6, 36.
28 Stewart McBride, “Ansel,” American Photographer 4, no. 6 (December 1980): 60.
29 This amount was arrived at by simply multiplying 1,000 by an average price of $400. Ansel sold Moonrise for prices ranging from fifty dollars, in the beginning, to twelve hundred during the last months that he took print orders, in 1975. Most of the prints made from 1970 onward were sold through dealers, who normally gross 50 percent of each sale.
30 Ansel Adams, “Information on Professional Work,” 1967, CCP. A check of catalogs and price lists over the years from such businesses as the Witkin Gallery, LIGHT gallery, Graphics International, the Weston Gallery, Carl Siembab Gallery, Grapestake, the Ansel Adams Gallery, G. Ray Hawkins, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Swann, and Butterfield & Butterfield yielded this information.
31 “Pictures Are Worth More Than Just Words,” World Business Weekly, December 15, 1980, 46–47.
32 Cynthia Salzman, “Photograph Market Retreats from Highs; Even Ansel Adams’s Work Is Vulnerable,” Wall Street Journal, June 1981.
33 Sean Callahan, “Countdown to Moonrise,” American Photographer, January 1981, 30–31.
34 Dennis di Cicco, “Dating Ansel Adams’ Moonrise,” Sky & Telescope 82, no. 5 (1991): 531.
35 Allan Parachini, “The Disputed Legacy of Ansel Adams: Someone Could Also Ask, Who Owns ‘Moonrise’?” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1989, section 6, 1, 12.
36 Ansel Adams to Mr. E. K. Burlew, First Asst. Secretary, and Mr. Newton Drury, Director of the National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, March 4, 1942. YNPRL; Ansel Adams to E. K. Burlew, August 18, 1942, YNPRL; E. K. Burlew to Ansel Adams, September 30, 1942, YNPRL.
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