Ansel Adams in Color

By Richard Lacayo | October 28, 2009 | +

Pool, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona, Ansel Adams, 1947/Ansel Adams

I’ve been looking through a new edition of Ansel Adams in Color, a book first published in 1993, nine years after his death, that’s been re-issued this year with 20 additional photographs. It’s a book full of subtle, long-deliberated pictures, which is pretty much what you would expect of Adams, and it led me to think about Adams and color — which, to put it mildly, are not two words you ordinarily think of together. I put those thoughts into a little intro text that accompanies a slide show of work from that book, which we’ve mounted on Time.com.

(That link will take you to the text. Once you get there the pictures can be accessed by clicking the photo to the left of the second paragraph.)

Related Topics: ansel adams, ansel adams in color, Looking Around

@TIMECulture

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I never warmed to Adams in B&W–his mountain sepulchers and silvery exaltations always felt like arm-twisting (sort of the same feeling I get from Oliver Stone, minus the exaltation).

But AA in color is, to me, more trustworthy, more down to earth (even with those big skies), quieter, more interesting.

I am struck by several of the quotes you selected for the slide show. Like this one: “Psychologically any one color is affected by other colors,” Adams wrote, “by changes of light quality and intensity, by the inherent contrast of the scene…”

In other words, color is a complex language onto itself–obvious in painting but for a long time perhaps underappreciated in photography because of the verisimilitude between the photograph and the thing photographed. It’s still an image–but one that gains its power from appearing closer to our everyday experience.

But in a photograph the language of color is activated–by its isolation in a frame and by the internal dynamics of form–in a different way than when you behold the thing itself.
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Do you know if there is some expositions of this artist pictures? I would like to discover more about him and his work.

Thanks,

Ben
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Is Ansel Adams regarded as the best photographer in his field during his career or was it after his death that he became such a famous photographer,

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