Ansel Adams in Color

[robert_jones8]

Ansel Adams in Color. Harry Callahan, ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993,

132 pp.

 

Many have made quite clear a fact about Ansel Adams regarding his own

colour photography: That he did not want it published, for his own

lack of control over the medium was substandard to the exacting

methods he employed in his black-and-white prints. Without

reservation, agreed.

 

But what most of Ansel Adams' most fervent admirers won't admit was

that this book of colour prints made from transparencies belie the

legendary artist's alleged "genius" for composition. Many of the

compositions within are colour versions of famous black-and-white

prints, the most famous being Half Dome at Yosemite.

 

I wish that aspiring photographers' introduction to Ansel Adams be

similar to that of a Japanese photography assistant I once employed.

She had seen little of Adams' work prior to this book. Her words

regarding this book were "he takes pleasant photographs of pretty

subjects in nature." I later introduced her to Adams' black-and-white

"greatest hits" that Little, Brown, also published. Her assessment:

"His compositions are generally conventional, but not novel. But, with

a red filter while shooting and many darkroom methods and formulas, he

uses technique to bring drama to his prints."

 

Ditto. It was refreshing to hear this opinion of Adams, because my

friend did not have the yoke of artistic correctness hanging about her

neck to remind her to speak of Adams in reverent, hushed, tones as

some great "master" as though he were the photographic equal of

Rembrandt, Vermeer or Rodin.

 

What Adams' admirers most fear about this book is that it will lay

waste to all the decades of carefully designed PR Adams' publicity

machine and his heirs have promulgated in their hagiographic

transmogrification of a pretty good artist and a peerless technician

into "St. Ansel."

 

The truth of the matter was that Ansel Adams made pretty pictures of

pretty landscapes. And, that's what you'll get in this book. If you

want the illusion of great art, turn to any of his volumes in

black-and-white.

 

But, if you want truly great, earth-shattering black and white

photography that inspires both intellect and emotion, then turn to the

true masters: Walker Evans, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Robert Frank and

Weegee.

[lachaine]

I'm not particularly an Ansel Adams booster, but I think you have to look at the time and the conditions in which most of those photographs were taken. I don't think Adams ever proclaimed himself a great artist, but he did strive for technical perfection, and his landscaped were certainly a cut above at the time.

[jim_mcbride]

my answer: CRAP

[seanb]

I'm not sure it's fair to compare your masters of photography with Adams, as they represent very different genres of photography. I see Adams as the high water mark of classical landscape painting translated to black and white photography. Since then, photography as an art form has become more independent of previous art - the decisive moment, which can only be frozen by the camera.

 

As an admirer of Adams, and an owner of this book, I do not fear the effect on his reputation at all. I agree that he is a good artist and excellent technician, and that is enough to earn my admiration. His colour work, as you say, was never intended for publication (some advertising work excepted). This book is therefore something of a curiousity and is probably aimed at completists. I found his struggle to master the new medium fascinating, even when not entirely successful.

 

His reputation, however, will continue to rest on the classic black and whites and that is where newcomers to Adams should start. All landscape photography could be dismissed as no more than pretty pictures, but Adams is still one of the masters of this particular art.

[frank_oddsocks]

This book has been on my shelves for a couple of years now, and has

been a recurrent inspiration to me on how <i>not</i> to photograph

landscape in colour.

<p>

Adams seems to have composed and exposed these photos exactly as if

they had been in black and white. And you simply cannot do that. If

you aim for a balance of tones (viewed, in modern terminology, as

greyscale values) then the colours are wrong, either washed out or too

saturated. Occasionally you can get away with it, if the subject is

strongly graphic, but for typical landscapes where there is a lot of

detail I find very false colours to be simply disturbing. Some of

these pictures also have traditional compositional devices such as

S-curves which work against the colours. When working in colour,

you must be prepared to walk away from scenes which presumably would

work in black and white.

<p>

There are a couple of good shots in the book. Plate 43 is a Kodachrome

version of the famous 'Aspens, North Rim' which almost works; the

colours are a bit too muted for my taste. On balance, I prefer the

monochrome version and that certainly fits better with modern

decor. Plate 57 ('Pool, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona') is also a

Kodachrome. It is a good colour composition let down rather badly

by equipment and film defects. There is serious lens flare at left,

which doubtless Adams could have fixed with dodging and burning if it

had been monochrome. And there is seriously bad fall-off; I don't

know whether he had a centre filter available to him or whether the

shot would have been impossible with it (bearing in mind the

reciprocity problems of Kodachrome and the speed of his large format

lens). These problems might have gone away on a smaller format. Or

not; it was 1947.

<p>

No doubt Adams was aware of his problems with colour and that was why

he didn't pursue it. Many of the shots in this book are lurid beyond

belief (Plate 85, 'Wizard Lake, Crater Lake National Park' is an

extreme example), yet in the foreword we find Adams quoted from 1983:

<p>

<i>As it was impossible to get a truly "realistic image" a concept of

pseudo-reality developed in both professional and amateur work and

color photogaphers seemed to revel in smashing, garish color.</i>

<p>

This quote sums up the problems many photographers had adapting to

colour. Twenty years later, plenty still have not, and they would do

well to study this book. It is a very worthwhile book, when treated

not as a set of photographs to copy but as a record of one artist's

failed journey into a different medium. It does not lessen Adams's

stature in his own medium of the black-and-white negative process.

<p>

Adams is often denigrated as an artist for political reasons. The

right hate him because he tried to stop wilderness turning into theme

parks. The left hate him because he wasn't off filming destitutes. The

extreme left dislike all the decorative arts, including landscape

photography, on principle. Personally, I can still have a social

conscience and an Adams on my wall at the same time, and I

don't consider non-polemical artists any less useful to society than

coal miners.

[mikep]

Its a good book to have if youre an Adams admirer as I am. The best part is a first edition can be had for below 10 bucks!!! why no see for yourself for the price of a crappy movie. what you bring away from it is up to you.

[adam_hartzler]

I am a fan of Ansel equally for his photographs and developments. He did many great things for the enviroment and photography alike.