Happy Birthday AA

It's Ansel Adams's birthday! Cheers to all you Dektol-sniffing, landscape shooting, West-Coasty, wooden-tripod-using, view-camera-lugging, spotmetering Zonies today.

Ansel had a sense of humor. Photobooth self-portrait.

Mike

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A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Hughes: "In December 1981, Evelyn and I received an invitation to attend a gala event in photography: a two-day celebration, in Carmel, California, of Ansel Adams' eightieth birthday, hosted by the Friends of Photography and organized by Mary and Jim Alinder. More than Two hundred of Ansel's 'oldest and dearest' friends were expected to attend. On Friday night, February 19th, 1982, we attended three different exhibitions of Ansel's photographs. Ansel, his wife Virginia, and their family drove between venues in his  white 1977 Cadillac with its 'Zone V' license plate. He announced his arrival by tooting his new computerized horn, which played 72 different songs. Ansel said he was partial to 'Marseillaise' and 'I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.' The melodious horn had been installed as a gift by his studio staff. At each stop, the throngs awaiting him sang 'Happy Birthday Ansel.'

"On February 20th, his birthday, Ansel was feted at a black tie dinner. Soup served was his favorite, now named Ansel's Sorrel Soup. The main course, as I remember, was pheasant under glass (although it may have been squab). Either way, it was delicious. As described in Mary Street Alinder's excellent and affectionate biography, a birthday cake that was supposed to be in the shape of Half Dome, but which more resembled Devil's Dome in Wyoming (remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind?) because the pastry chef had neither been to Yosemite nor even seen Ansel's famous photograph, was brought in to great fanfare by the local high school marching band. Champagne toasts began with a presentation of the Legion of Merit by the French cultural attache and the photographer Lucien Clergue, who had flown over for the event. Toasts continued through much of the evening. John Szarkowski was seated at our table (or we were seated at his...), and I have vivid memories, as the evening wore on, of John balancing an empty champagne glass on his head as a signal to our waiter for increasingly frequent refills. It was a side of John I had never seen.

"The celebration culminated with a recital in Ansel and Virginia's home by Ansel's favorite pianist, Vladimir Ashkenazy. In his autobiography, Ansel called it an 'unforgettable experience. His interpretations of Chopin, Beethoven and Ravel were colossal.' Ansel had, after all, given instructions to Virginia and Mary that when he died, he didn't want a funeral; he wanted instead a 'small concert to be arranged for our friends.'

"Without question, it was an equally unforgettable experience for us."

Comments

[Rick Wilcox]

Everything you said about Ansel is true. And I have been everything you said about him. However, I'm still waiting for my ship to come in. I do own an original Ansel print. A portrait signed by him. That's as close to God as I can get.

[Steve]

This was one of my birthday gifts from my wife last year;

http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color-Andrea-Stillman/dp/0316056413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361405320&sr=8-1&keywords=ansel+adams+color

I never knew he had turned to the dark side... ;-)

[Mark Roberts]

What the Duck: http://www.whattheduck.net/strip/123

[Dillan]

I am none of that, but I named my son Ansel.

Happy birthday admired sir.

[T Bishop]

Funny, I would have guessed that the photo was of Frank Zappa!

[Jim Simmons]

Just last week I read your featured book - Looking at Ansel Adams. It covered many of the oft-told stories, but it also had some new insights into the Ansel the very human man that were thoroughly enjoyable. Ansel was no more perfect than any of the rest of us, but his striving for perfection in his art and craft was an inspiration to me. I was also impressed by how he balanced his very personal view of what photography should be with the gracious willingness to go to the extremes required to make others happy. Making that many copies of Moonrise... would be more than most people could stand.

[Eric]

Stephen Shore, in this YouTube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1DqhMsnPw&sns=em tells the story that as a young photographer he was at a dinner seated next to an older Ansel Adams. Adams, he recounts, had too much to drink and at one point said to Shore, (I paraphrase) "I took some interesting photographs at one point in my career and ever since I've been taking the same photograph". Shore was stunned and thought to himself (again I paraphrase) "I don't ever want to be an older photographer sitting next to a young emerging (argh!!) photographer and say such a thing" and finishes by saying whenever he notices himself taking the same photos again he forces himself to do something entirely different.

The video which I found excellent describes how Shore followed through on that advice to himself.