Ansel Adams in Color [Hardcover]

Harry M. Callahan (Editor), James L. Enyeart (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1993

In a career that spanned six decades, Ansel Adams was America's foremost landscape photographer and also one of its most ardent environmentalists. He began to use colour soon after Kodachrome was invented in the mid-1930s, and while much of his colour work was done "on assignment" he also did significant personal or "creative" photography in colour. The distinctive visualization of a scene and the technical mastery that characterize his black and white work are immediately evident in his colour work, but only a small fraction of the latter has hitherto been published. For this book the distinguished photographer Harry Callahan has made a selection of the best of Adams's colour work.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Although he claimed he did not like color photography, Ansel Adams nonetheless produced a highly accomplished if relatively small body of color work, selections of which are gathered here. These scintillating images embody the same refined detail and delicacy of light seen in Adams's black-and-white photographs. In fact, the subtleties of light so often overwhelmed in color photography are clearly evident here. Characterized by restrained, at times understated hues, the photographs are consistently remarkable. They have been ably selected and arranged by editor Callahan and are further enhanced by an informative introduction by James L. Enyeart. This beautifully designed and printed work, which is well worth its price, should be considered a standard title in all public and academic library collections. Highly recommended.
- Raymond Bial, Parkland Coll. Lib., Champaign, Ill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Adams died in 1984, still planning a book on color photography, a topic that he had wrestled with since the 1950s and that gave him profound discomfort. He allowed that were he a young photographer in the 1980s, he'd work in color, yet in the last letter quoted herein he confessed, "I don't like photographic color. . . . It is not my dish of tea!" In other remarks, he was more analytic about color's challenges. Mostly, he regretted lack of control over intensity and hue, which afforded him no way to transform color as he transformed and exaggerated tonal values in black-and-white. For Adams, black-and-white was an abstract medium and color was inseparable from banal realism. He also sensed in himself a lack of "color imagination," the quality that distinguished the work of his colleague and friend Eliot Porter. He was right, yet he produced 3,000 color transparencies, most as tests for Kodak or for 1940s and 1950s commercial jobs. Eminent color photographer Harry Callahan culled 59 landscapes from this work for this album, which thoroughgoing photography collections will want in order to document Adams' beliefs about color photography and as testimony to the problems color has presented as a creative medium. Gretchen Garner

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 131 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821219804
• ISBN-13: 978-0821219805
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 10.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,269,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Perspective on the Limits of Adams' Genius, November 16, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ansel Adams in Color (Hardcover)

"I can truthfully say I can remember only two or three color photographs that are worth remembering." -- Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams long felt that color photography was not art and not consistent with his vision of his own photography. What we have in this volume are almost totally unpublished and unexhibited images from his transparencies that he chose not to publish or exhibit. In other words, these are mostly his rejects. So, this is like pawing through his working files of sketches rather than his finished work, in an unauthorized way. How does that make you feel? Hmmm.

For me, the benefit of this volume was to better understand the brilliance of how his processing of black and white images played into the success of his best work. This book contains 50 images that clearly do not have the full Ansel Adams feel and impact.

The strength of this volume is the plenitude of material on what Adams had to say about color photography in general and his own. These points are nicely characterized in the essay by James L. Enyeart. One of the key problems for Adams was that he could "see" the final black and white image he wanted to create in his mind before taking a photograph, but could not "see" the color image in advance. He was not one to take hundreds of exposures hoping to have one or two turn out to be interesting. The art of photography for him was always a deliberate one, not an accidental process. While many color photographers used Polaroid stills as tests in this way, Adams did not want to do so.

Another problem was that early color processing did not allow him the control over the final image that black and white processing did.

Perhaps the ultimate problem was that "the most difficult subject for color photography was landscape." "The image -- to the photographer -- is a very different experience from what the viewer might receive from it." Think of a photograph then, as "a simulation of a perception of the world around us . . . ." A color photograph tended to destroy Adams' preference for understatement, and desire to show subtle connections. In fact, you will often see poor photography literally shouting with color that overwhelms the senses to no purpose.

Harry M. Callahan took on the thankless task of picking out some images to put in the book. He did this solely on aesthetic grounds, reflecting his own taste. While I do not know what he did not select, I was interested to see that a few works seemed to carry off Adams' desire for subtlety in new ways by showing additional detail in the shadows that are missing in his parallel black and white images. These works include:

Yosemite Falls, c. 1953

Green Hills, c. 1945

Mount McKinley, Grass, 1948

Pool, 1947

El Capitan, Texas, 1947

Waimea Canyon, 1948

Clearing Storm, Yosemite, c. 1950

Detail of Mammoth Pool, Yellowstone, 1946

Mono Lake, 1947

Bad Water and Telescope Pool, Death Valley, c. 1947

The Grand Canyon, 1947

If you want to see Ansel Adams' best work, skip this book. If you want to understand why his black and white work is so great, take a look at this book.

Whether you decide to look or not, I have a challenge for you. Do you have anything in your files that is not intended for the public to see? Take a lesson from the experience of this book and destroy that material today.

Edit down to the best!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Adams was against this., April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ansel Adams in Color (Hardcover)

Late in his life, Adams' staff unearthed color transparencies and color negatives that were stored in his negative vault. With Adams' permission, the staff had a few prints made with the idea of exhibiting or publishing them. After seeing the first prints, Adams told them to kill the project. "I hate this color," he told them. "My reaction is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I can't stand it! Please stop." [Quoted in Mary Alinder's bio of Adams, pp. 382-383.]

I can guess at the motives of the people behind this book (who knew Adams, and had to have known of his opinion regarding this aspect of his own work), and they should be ashamed of themselves.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for inspiration, September 4, 1999

By 

Eric Welch "Photo pro" (Carlsbad, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ansel Adams in Color (Hardcover)

This book uses photographs by one of the century's greatest artists. Not just photographers. But the sad part about it is, and this was made perfectly clear by him - there is no mistake - he DID NOT want it to be published. Why? According to his nurse/assistant/friend/biographer Mary Street Alinder he did not wish them to be published because the color photographs were not good examples of his vision.

Sophistry will never be able to compensate for the point that he didn't want it published. No amount of money made will justify it. Historical value yes. Ansel's vision on a new level? Hardly.

At best it's a curiosity. Like listening to Beehthoven plink on the piano coming up with another passage. A symphony it ain't. And Ansel, of all people, is the lesser for it if it's ever put forward as art, and not simply as history.