Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography [Hardcover]

Jonathan Spaulding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 1995

Working with a cumbersome 8 x 10 field camera, Ansel Adams (1902-1984) created some of the most dramatic and influential photographs ever made of the American West. His majestic landscapes and evocative still lifes conveyed a vision of an idealized America that helped inspire the wilderness conservation movement. Yet despite these accomplishments, Adams has been the least studied of our most important photographers. Now Jonathan Spaulding provides the first full biography of the artist and a critical analysis of his life's work.
Refuting the myth of a solitary and carefree wilderness explorer, Spaulding portrays a man grappling with the question of how art and nature intersect in the modern world. He addresses the contradictions the photographer faced as both artist and activist: his struggle to balance art and commercialism; his desire to create art, yet enjoy bourgeois comforts; his simultaneous support for economic development, tourism, and wilderness preservation.
Spaulding places Adams's work in the context of modernism and the other major developments in twentieth-century art and ideas. He examines his debt to the pioneering art photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, and his response to later artists. He traces Adams's growth as an environmental activist and discusses his use of photography to further the cause of conservation.
Questions regarding the meaning and place of wilderness in modern culture remain with us today. By analyzing these issues through Adams's life and work, this book is a telling portrait of one of the century's greatest photographers and a reflection of our changing attitudes about the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) created some of the most influential photographs ever made; he was one of this century's leading exponents of environmental values. Writer and scholar Spaulding casts a broad net in this fine biography; it is a well-rounded portrait of the man, an analysis of his work and an exploration of the development of photography as a fine art. As a youth, Adams had rigorous piano training that proved invaluable in his career, giving him intensely developed work habits and an insatiable quest for technical excellence. Spaulding follows Adams through his meeting with Alfred Steiglitz and his early shows, his collaboration with Mary Austin and Georgia O'Keeffe, his long friendship with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (she collaborated with him on later books) and his deep involvement with the Sierra Club. A final, fitting tribute came a year after his death when a peak in Yosemite was officially named Mount Ansel Adams. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It seems that every third family in America has an Ansel Adams (1902-84) poster on the wall, images that were difficult to make but easy to love. Adams's images portray a romanticized and unspoiled Western American landscape omitting track houses, immigrant laborers, open-pit mines, timber clear-cutting, and traffic jams created by recreational vehicles in our national parks. As a member of the purist f/64 group, he applied considerable technical knowledge to portray the beauty of simple, ordinary things, and he has had incalculable influence on the public's appreciation of such otherworldly concepts as our need for solitude, the sacredness of untouched wilderness, and the fragility of nature. This is not the first book examining Adams's life and the evolution of his aesthetics, but it does provide significant discussion of his family life, his conflicts with David Brower's increasingly aggressive Sierra Club, Adams's propaganda work for the war-time federal government, and his photography of the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar. Overall, independent scholar Spaulding has presented a highly readable account of Adams's life, including thorough notes and an excellent bibliography. Recommended for photography collections.?Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 533 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (December 11, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520089928
• ISBN-13: 978-0520089921
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,431,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superlative Biography, February 12, 2004

By 

Fred M. Blum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography (Hardcover)

Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography by Jonathan Spaulding is a superlative biography of one of America's true icons. Spaulding does a magnificent job describing the evolution of Adams as a photographer, environmentalist and individual. In this, the book is more than just Adams' biography, but a history of the environmental movement and photography in America.

The only significant disappointment was the inability of Spaulding to utilize the actual Adams pictures when describing their creation. For instance, his description of the creation of Moon over Hernandez would have greatly benefitted from the ability of the reader to actually see the picture. However, unfortunately he was unable to obtain permission to utilize the photographs. While this is not Spaldings fault, it does limit the impact the of the narrative.

The most interesting part of the book was the evolution of 20th Century American photography. Adams cannot be separated from the development of photography in American and his life touched most of the great American photographers. Adams was constantly in conflict with many of them over the issue of quality versus the benefits of photojournalism. Adams saw photography as a high art form and was at odds with those who saw it as more as a story telling devise.

For those that are interested in Adams, environmentalism or photography this book is a must.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent biography, May 3, 2003

By 

Thomas Emerson (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography (Paperback)

Jonathan Spaulding's biography of Ansel Adams (or AA as people referred to him) provides a counterpoint to Mary Street Alinder's. While Alinder shows us Adams the Man first, with the influence of the American West and the Environmental Movement in a supporting role, these forces are prominent in Spaulding's work.

This is not to say that Spaulding does not talk about AA's private life, a pre-requisite for any biography, but does so only as it relates to AA's pursuit of photography and environmental causes. Absent, for example, are details of his relationship with his wife Virginia (which was quite complex: someone needs to write a biography of Virgina Best Adams in a way that Stacy Schiff wrote of Vera Nabokov) and the hard relationship with his children.

What Spaulding gives us instead is a very detailed account of the evolution of Adams' photographic vision and technique, and the influence of the American West on it. Through this you find his relationship to other important photographers and their influence on him and his styles: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, and many others. We also see the influence of Western expansion throughout the first half of the 20th century, especially after WWII. In particular the seeming incongruity of AA producing pictures drawing people to the Western national parks while campaigning with the Sierra Club to limit the impact of tourists on Nature is discussed. The battle, falling out, and eventual reconciliation between Adams and David Brower is also detailed

If you are most interested in AA's life, read his autobiography or Alinder's biographry. If you want to know more about his influences and those things that he influenced, Spaulding's book is an excellent and readable choice. The book is heavily footnoted, with over 80 pages of notes, and contains a useful bibliography for anyone wishing to research further Adams' very interesting life.

As a footnote, the book does not include any pictures whose copyright is held by the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, which refused to grant permission.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In search of the landscape as essential..., December 26, 1999

By 

Fred (Turin, Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography (Hardcover)

This biography offers its readers a wide range of suggestions and examples how American landscape entered into the American cultural essence as an icon, a point of reference. Obvious that photographers could inhale deeper this magic: great prairies, majestic spaces of woods and water, and so on. Adams fought all his life for this searching, his adventure followed this last century, expecially for what's "preservation of nature and animals/plants nature contains". Thank you, Adams, from one among million walkers and photographers! Fred T. from Turin, Italy.