Photographer of Week 6: Ansel Adams
During my time spent learning about Ansel Adams, I have collected a lexicon of his achievements. Like how when he was four years old, due to the aftershock of a large earthquake and a fire in 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, which he never got fixed. Growing up as an only child in San Francisco, California, Adams was also notoriously smart but had a bit of shyness and as a result of the “Earthquaked” nose, he had some problems fitting in at school. It wasn’t until Adams was twelve years old that he taught himself piano. Adams was so talented with the piano that he had originally intended on becoming a concert pianist before he discovered his passion for photography. With the discipline that he learned from his time as a pianist and the structure of his frustrating and irregular childhood, he used those skills and inspirations, adopted it into his photography, and showed the world the magnificence of the United States all through a Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie his parents had given him. While using his Kodak, he pioneered not only unphotographed terrain at the risk of a jail sentence, getting all his equipment taken from him by the authorities, and even death. He also pioneered different editing styles, such as his process of Burning and Dodging his photos to get his classic “Negative Space” look to his photography. Ansel Adams was a master of directing the attention of the viewer, and his tactics of diverting what seems to be real are above any else seen in the field of landscape photography before. Adam’s first published and widely recognized work was first published by The Sierra Club’s 1922 Bulletin. By 1933 Adams was elected to the club’s board of directors and was well known as both “The Artist of The Sierra Nevada” and the “Defender of Yosemite”.
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