Speaking of Ansel Adams, as we were the other day...isn't it interesting that he was so interested in nature and wilderness, from intimate views of flowers on the forest floor to magisterial vistas encompassing miles of scenery, while at the same time having no detectable interest in wildlife? He wasn't a people photographer, but there are more people in his photographs than there are Western fauna.
Curious.
By contrast, his color counterpart in American nature photography, Eliot Porter, was better known as a bird photographer than as a landscapist and naturalist in the early stages of his career.
I'm just going from memory here, but after half a day of thinking about it I still can't conjure up in my mind's eye an Ansel Adams picture with any sort of wild animal featured. The only one I can think of that contains an animal at all is that cloud-darkened hillside (which I believe was also the one from which he removed the year of a graduating class spelled out in white stones on the hillside)—and that was a grazing horse.
Here's the picture, just found it. (I seem to remember a different but similar one as well.)
We could test this by scouring Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, the closest thing in print to a catalogue raisonné of his work, to see if we can find any pictures of wild animals. But someone else would have to do it. Despite the fact that that's the all-time bestselling book through TOP's links—we sold more than 1,100 copies of that book—I didn't buy one myself, so I don't have it. (I have plenty of Adams titles, though, don't worry.)
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Jeff: "Chicken Farm, Manzanar."
Mike replies: Thanks. As I'm sure you know, though, that's not an exception. The Manzanar Relocation Center work was documentary work done for purposes of social justice. It wasn't artwork. And anyway the point was that there are seldom wild animals in his landscapes, not that he didn't sometimes take snapshots of chickens or cows or what have you. The telling thing about the Manzanar work is that while he was there he took the opportunity to turn his lens away from the encampment and take one of his "real" photographs, the heroic landscape of Mt. Williamson in a clearing storm (the one with the field of boulders filling the foreground).
I hope you don't think I'm being argumentative; I'm just making a point. I shot two weddings in my life, one for my best friend and the other for my mother and her second husband. That doesn't make me a wedding photographer. We always need to distinguish an artist's real work from the incidental work all of us do of one thing and another, or that are done for other purposes or for pay.
Jeff replies to Mike: "Of course, I’m well aware, and anticipated your viewpoint. See also other links, especially deer pics in winter. Obviously Adams wasn’t a wildlife photographer; we know that. There are still some pics including animals; my only point. Hope I’m also not appearing argumentative. Just keeping in the spirit of your 'no animals' theme."
Patrick Perez: "I wonder if the lack of animal subjects is at least partly due to the fact that his working process was methodical, and animals move around, changing his composition."
Mike replies: That's likely. I'm just speculating, but he might have thought of wildlife photography as a different sub-speciality, one that was better left to others more dedicated to it. I say this on no authority at all; it's purely a guess.
So does anyone have 400 Photographs?
Christoph Geiss: "Some count sheep when they can't sleep, I counted pictures: I found four images with animals in his 400 Photographs:
'Sunrise, Laguna Pueblo, NM,' 1937 – dog
'Moth and Stump, Interglacial Forest, Glacier Bay NP, AK,' 1948 – moth
'Winter sunrise, Sierra Nevada, From Lone Pine, CA,' 1944 – the already mentioned horse
'Pasture, Sonoma County, N. CA,' 1951 – a few sheep
"... and 21 images of people. Of course, there are millions of fish in his images—they just happened to be underwater :-) ."
David Raboin: "Was there a method for photographing wildlife in the 1930s–'50s where Ansel could've matched the aesthetics and print quality of his landscapes? There aren't many successful wildlife photographers who used a large format view camera and 50 ISO film. Also, wildlife photography is a very different game than landscape photography. Landscape is all about having having good light at a specific location. Landscape photography is planning and waiting. Wildlife photography is more like a hunt; it relies on persistence and luck. I think Adams would've loved it if a majestic elk had walked into one of his scenes and stood very still in a place that complimented the composition, but he was never that lucky. He got that horse photo because horses are easy. Horses are everywhere and they don't run off at the first sight of humans."
Mike replies: A few people might remember when I told the story of the strangest magazine article I ever wrote. I was assigned to write the "con" side of a pro/con pair of articles about large format. The writer who was supposed to write the "pro" side, Ronald Wisner, never submitted his article—so the Editor, without even telling me first, ran my "con" piece alone!! Which alarmed me, because, quite naturally, it was very one-sided.
Anyway, one of the illustrations in that article was a picture called "Horses standing in a field," and it showed a picture of a field with no horses in it. The caption made the point that in the 90 seconds it took to deploy the tripod and ready the view camera, the horses had wandered off. It was just a jokey way of making the point that view cameras aren't exactly quick and reactive.
Kirk Tuck: "Counterpoint to the folks who've suggested that Ansel's use of the large view camera precluded animal photos: He often used a Hasselblad for some of his work. Not for the majestic landscapes but for lot of other uses. And in later years perhaps the bulk of his commercial work."
Mike replies: He claimed he used the Hasselblad since the 1600F first came out in 1948, but it seems likely he didn't use a Hasselblad as his main camera for all kinds of work until the 500C came out in 1957; the shutters on the earlier models were fragile and unreliable. In Ansel Adams, an Autobiography, written with Mary Street Alinder and published by Little, Brown in 1985, the year after his death, page 375, it says he used the Hasselblad for the last 20 years of his life, which is what I've always gone by. By 1964, 20 years before his death, he was already suffering from gout and arthritis and was only a year away from moving into the Carmel house where he mainly printed archive negatives in the custom darkroom there for the rest of his life. He was famous by that time and was able to "print money" by printing his photographs. His favorite photograph taken with the Hasselblad, "Moon and Half Dome," was made in 1960.
At this article (you have to scroll down a bit) there a picture of him with his Hassie teaching Susan Ford, daughter of President and Mrs. Gerald Ford, at a workshop.
Craig Yuill: "I have owned 35mm, medium format, and large format film cameras as well as crop sensor digital cameras. I have taken many photos of birds and animals over the years. The percent of those taken with the medium and large format film cameras equals 0. The percent taken with 35mm film and crop sensor digital cameras equals 100. Ansel Adams wasn’t really equipped for wildlife and bird photography."
Dennis Mook: "If my memory serves me well, the late radio and television personality, Don Imus, an avid photographer himself, bought Adams’ Hasselblad camera and lenses at an auction for a hefty sum—about $100,000, I believe. They may still be owned by the Imus family."
