'No Animals' Adams

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."

Comments

[Ugo Bessi]

Well, he was a people photographer more than any one of us can ever hope to be: in one of his books there are portraits of Georgia O'Keefe, Orozco, Steichen; he photographed the Japanese Americans in their concentration camps; and what about the photograph of that small child of which he says (I think it's in The print): "It's a little hazy, but I borrowed the camera from Imogen Cunningham, and her lenses are always dirty"?

[Stelios]

Was never interested much in Ansel Adams but that picture is magnificent (and looking at it on a monitor!).

Thanks for introducing me to Eliot Porter.

[Andreas]

2 horses, actually :-)

[James Weekes]

Could it be that the reason was that the 8x10 view cameras he used along with lower iso films made the shutter speeds too long to consistently capture wildlife?

[Albert Smith]

By all accounts, Adams was a control freak, before that term was invented. With his prolonged process of determining the best exposure and composition, only a static subject could tolerate the time to set up the gear, and make all the adjustments to get the results he desired.

I doubt that an animal would stick around long enough to be included in his images.

[Rob L.]

Moonrise over Hernandez has tons of bats, just hard to see. The f/64 photos just required long enough exposures the fast moving gazelles streaked through the frame:)

It does seem a choice, curious if it was a result of his methods or a just a disinterest.

[Jeff]

Horse riders of Yosemite

https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/18939/horse-riders-of-yosemite

[Calvin Amari]

Eg,
https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppprs.00315/

https://www.globalgallery.com/detail/460757/adams-flock-in-owens-valley-national-parks-and-monuments-1941

[Kenneth Tanaka]

“… but there are more people in his photographs than there are Western fauna.” True. But, c’mon, that’s true of -any- photographer whose work specialized in using a view camera. The only way to shoot animals with a rig like that is to kill and taxidermy them first.

[Jeff]

Cattle in South Farm, Manzanar

https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppprs.00315/

[Jeff]

Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar

https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695972/

[Jeff]

Half Dome and Deer

http://ccp-emuseum.catnet.arizona.edu/view/objects/asitem/People@25/435/invno-asc;jsessionid=44857AEFA92EC0B7C436245FD2E4CBBD?t:state:flow=0b6f5f40-7071-4fde-a33d-eebd88cd6800

[Jeff]

Paul Masson Vineyards, Saratoga

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/a-grand-vision-the-david-h-arrington-collection-of-ansel-adams-photographs/paul-masson-vineyards-saratoga

[Jeff]

Deer, Yosemite Valley, Winter

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/a-grand-vision-the-david-h-arrington-collection-of-ansel-adams-photographs/deer-yosemite-valley-winter

[Jeff]

Chicken Farm, Manzanar

https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppprs.00192/

[Jeff1000]

On my Flickr page I took almost the exact same photograph from Lone Pine, CA, as if I was almost photographing from the same spot. The funny thing is that when I took the picture I didn’t even know that Ansel had photographed that same eastern Sierra view of Mt. Whitney. Plus mine is more of a handheld snapshot, one exposure only.

Ansel’s legacy is so powerful anyone trying to photograph a big landscape must be in his Ansel Adam’s phase.

[Stephen Woolford]

John Szarkowski's Ansel Adams at 100 is enough for me.

[Mark Sampson]

Wildlife wasn't his interest. And in his formative years, 1920s-30s, the gear needed for wildlife photography as we know it basically didn't exist.
Look at old "National Geographic" magazines and you'll quickly realize that wildlife photography became a thing with the rise of color film, 35mm SLRs, and affordable long telephoto lenses.
So it wasn't part of Adams' thinking, wasn't his subject, nor suited to his approach. You can't do everything. Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Ezra Stoller, Margaret Bourke-White, Weegee, were all contemporaries of Adams, all very successful, none known to have photographed wildlife.

[Ned Bunnell]

I was going to mention Half Dome and Deer, but I see Jeff already beat me to it. I actually have this print, which I bought while I was attending a workshop in Carmel in 1969.

[James Bullard]

I have a copy of 400 Photos but I did not check it for animal photos. I occasionally photograph animals/birds when the opportunity presents itself but it is purely opportunistic on my part and I suspect Ansel's as well. Artistic wildlife/animal photos are a separate category just like street photography is different from landscape and I don't think that's where Ansel's head was at. He was attuned to wilderness, not wildlife.

[Jeff]

BTW, both deer photos linked earlier were from Yosemite, not Manzanar. Both seem “artistic” rather than documentary in nature.

[Larry Aniger]

There's a grazing horse in his Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, Lone Pine photo but I can't think of others. In his early work in New Mexico in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was shooting the Puebloan dancers with a "miniature" camera, I think a Contax or Zeiss 35mm, but they seem so distant and an anomaly for the work we tend to remember him.

His people photo were not half bad nor was the bulk of his commercial work, such as for the University of California, Yosemite Park and the NPS and his early 1950s book "The Pageant of History of Northern California" which features both his industrial works and cultural landscape.

Like many of us, Ansel did have to make a living between his famed landscape outtings and along the way, contributed to teaching the next generation and give-back to his industry using science and testing that created the foundation of the craft that people like me benefited.

[Jeff]

Adams briefly shows off his Hasselblad kit in this video, from his home.

https://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Photographer-VHS/dp/6300219496

[Robert Pillow]

Do moths count?

[Dan Montgomery]

As Jeff1000 points out, that's Mt. Whitney, highest point in the Lower 48, in "Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California, 1941."

But here's a friendly tip: Whitney is in the upper right. Lone Pine Peak is no slouch of a mountain, but it appears higher here only because it is closer. I've seen it misidentified as Whitney many times, even by Californians and Nevadans who maybe oughta know better. Did I mention that I've been atop Whitney three times? No? Well, that's because there is no reason for me to mention it.

[Jeff1000]

I should have added this to my earlier comment, but here’s the link to my Lone Pine/ Mt. Whitney picture:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/198961927@N02/53191580601/

[Scott Kirkpatrick]

I went through Adams' autobiography, since it seemed to cover a wider spectrum. Lots of people, but few animals. 2 burros plus a horse and rider from his days of Sierra Club expeditions, two bull skulls and horns, plus the chickens at Manzanar. That's it.

[Rick Popham]

I'm pretty sure I saw a color photograph that included a rattlesnake on a rock low in the frame. I believe it was in the book "Ansel Adams in Color", which was a collection of his Kodachrome photographs. I don't have the book so I can't double check. And I can't find it online -- oh well.

[Ken Lunders]

Flipping through 400 Photos I spotted a few incidental, though essential IMO, sheep in the foreground of - Pasture, Sonoma County, Northern California, 1951

[KeithB]

I looked through my copy of "400", and missed the sheep. But did find a cigar store Indian and the moth.

[Peter Jeffrey Croft]

In 1988 I had the fabulous opportunity to drive from Las Vegas, to the Grand Canyon, then up through Death Valley to Yosemite and stayed overnight in the lodge. I visited the Ansel Adams museum and was so moved that I posted myself a postcard (back to Perth, Western Australia) just saying "I'm here!"

We have some pretty spectacular scenery in Australia, but views like the Grand Canyon and Half Dome just make my jaw drop. The grandeur of America!

But also making my jaw drop is half a million dollars for an Adams print?! Sorry, I can't see the value. Not for me, even assuming I could afford it.

[Dave Millier]

Never heard of "400", but Amazon UK had a hardback copy available for £29 which arrived on the same day. My, it's a chunky book.

I've gone a bit crazy with photo books of late, after years of buying none: "400", Natalie Christensen, Saul Leiter, Kenna's "Trees", Paul Hart's "Drained", "Farmed", "Reclaimed", Nigel Danson's "Spirit of Luskentyre", Finn Hopson's "Fieldwork", "The World's Top Photographers: Landscape", "Masters of Landscape Photography", Nick Brandt "Across this ravaged land".

Please don't recommend books, I'm going bankrupt...

[Jeffrey Hartge]

Did the "quick flip" through 400 Photos like Ken Lunders. I found 3 that obviously had animals. The horse image you presented in the article. The one that Ken mentions and another with a dog prominently featured called Sunrise, Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, 1937.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

I believe the Ansel Adams documentary film Jeff referenced earlier (on VHS tape) is actually freely viewable on YouTube.

[Daniel Speyer]

Adams used smaller cameras (35 mm Contax and 120 [620?] Kodak Medalist. I wished he actually did more street photography. One of my favorite images of his (and in that genre) is of cattle being driven to market. Taken with Kodak Medalist, which he praised. Believe he said it was from atop his IH Travelall station wagon. It is in Book 1, The Camera (although could be Book 2).

[Jeff1000]

Exactly correct Dan Montgomery. I had at first misidentified Lone Pine Peak for Mt. Whitney because being closer it looked taller, and there was no reason for me to mention any of the stuff I had mentioned too lol.

[Moose]

As long as we are on all things St. Ansel, here's a quote I just ran across in a recently acquired book:

"A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety."

This may seem contrary to some sentiments about his work.

[Gary Nylander]

I can understand that Mr. Adams's using large format cameras that he was famous for using might have made it more difficult to capture any kind of wildlife in his photographs.

In my pursuit of landscape photographs in Canada, many years ago while photographing at White Swan Lake Provincial Park in Eastern British Columbia, Canada. As I wandered down to the lake not far from my campsite I observed a moose at the water's edge, so I quietly set up my 8x10 view camera and made a couple of exposures with black and white film. It was not a great close-up shot but it goes to show that it does happen sometimes that if you are out in nature enough with any kind of camera you are bound to see some kind of wildlife.

[Leslie Ashe]

Also “Turkeys,Northern California” on page 170 of “Ansel Adams An Autobiography” together with an amusing anecdote of taking the picture.

[David Comdico]

I think what makes a photographer interesting is what they photograph, not what they don’t.

[Tullio Emanuele]

I came across a very good reproduction of the winter sunrise picture ( in the large format edition of Ansel Adams at 100) and I count 4 horses.