Chapter 10 - Manzanar

In Chapter 10, Ansel Adams takes photographs at the Mazanar relocation camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. Many people did not understand his approach to taking the pictures. Though he was opposed to the relocation, his photos did not attempt to capture the bleak existence that the internees must have felt. Instead he showed them successfully adapting to the challenges they faced. It could easily be said that these photos had a propoganda quality about them. But as Ben said, he was not trying to trick people into believing it was OK there. He was trying to show that these families were just like everyone elses families - "they were not enemies".

Chapter 9 - Michael: Interested or bored?

Ben and I liked different quotes from today’s chapter about the taking of one of Adams most popular images: Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

Ben liked it when Adams said, “Sometimes I think I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter!”

I liked Adams response to being criticized for not including people in his images: “… there were always two people in his pictures: the photographer and the viewer.”

As a non-photographer, I had never considered the importance of what takes place in the darkroom. I had always seen the ’picture’ as being captured at the moment the shutter was opened. I was thinking about how Adams would have ‘processed’ the same shot today from a digital image. It took him nearly 30 years to get the print that captured his visualization of the moment. With some Photoshop skills he could have easily manipulated the image in a few hours. Additionally, the initial image would not have needed to be nearly as close to the printed image.

I wonder if/where Adams would have drawn the processing line.

Ben and I both wondered what 8 year old Michael was thinking as he traveled with his father. It is ‘romantic’ to think he would have loved the adventure but I cannot help but think that he would have been very bored stuck in the back seat of a dusty hot car. Hours of driving and looking, followed by tedious setup followed by a few captured images – then back in the car. I wonder what visualization of the ‘moonlight’ moment Michael carried with him into his life and how that compared to the image produced nearly 30 years later that best captured Ansel’s vision.

Chapter 8 - anti-Yosemite

Adams seems to me like a pretty confident guy but he was definitely not feeling that way as he walked the streets of New York to the gallery of Alfred Stieglitz. He was intimidated by the city - which must have seemed like everything that Yosemite was not. (Remember how the Futurists of the early 20th century - like Gino Severini - were creating art glorifying industrialization? I was thinking that a picture of New York City would be a futurists counterpart to Adams photos of Yosemite.)

He reached a turning point in his professional life when he decided not to go back to Steiglitz' office but his wife presuaded him to do it.

Can you list some of the turning points - moments that changed the course of Adams life - that we have read about so far?

The thing about turning points is that we are usually not aware that we have reached one at the moment we make the choice. Can you think of an example of something you did in your life that significantly changed your future - but you did not anticipate that at the time?

Back At It

A variety of distractions got us off track but we getting back on track with Ansel again.

Chapter 6 - History

Ansel and Virginia Adams were married January 2, 1928. What other things happened in the world on that day?

Can you find a newspaper frontpage online from that day?

Chapter 5 - John Muir

Today, April 21st - the day before Earth Day, is John Muir's birthday. He sounds like he was a very interesting character. (As a Wisonsinite, I appreciate the many things he did before moving to California.) He died in 1914 so he never met Ansel Adams.

Chapter 5 shows an evolution of the Sierra Club from the early years as an organization advocating exploration, to an organization focused on conservation.

In Chapter 5 we also saw a new side of Adams. What did we learn about his personality?

Chapter 4 - Quotes

I found two statements in Chapter 4 revealing.

The first was on page 29 where Adams said, "Photographers are, in a sense, composers, and the negatives are their scores." I like the quote because he is comparing his experience as an aspiring pianist to his other love of photography. I also like what it says about photography. It would be easy to think that the photography takes place at the moment that the shutter button is pressed. In today's digital age where the negative has been removed from the process (though some still shoot to film), it is interesting to think of Adams sitting at his computer processing a photo with Photoshop. I wonder where/if he would draw the line on that.

I also appreciated the statement on the next page, "He emphasized that he was not trying to duplicate reality, but to make a work of art." It must have been clear to him early in his experience as a photographer that there was nothing he could produce that would replace the impact of standing on the spot next to the camera. I wonder if the limitations of the medium was frustrating to him. This statement would indicate he understood and accepted those limitations.

In the early years of Adams career, photography was not considered art. What argument do you think Adams would have made to try to change people's minds?