Customer Reviews

Ansel Adams: Divine Performance

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Here you will find information and insight you simply won't find in other books about Ansel. This is not a biography as such but rather a selective investigation into what made Ansel tick. Hammond has brought to bear formidable research talents and excellent writing skills to expose the inner workings, development, aesthetics and strivings of Ansel Adams in fascinating detail. Most highly recommended.

To be an artist a great many thoughts have to pass through your head -in the case of photography, through the lens first into your eye. What this book shows,like no other before it on Adams, is that he was not just( ! ) a master craftsman ,but also a person with a true philosophical turn of mind, carrying him into a spiritual realm to put him on the heights with Scriabin, William James, Edward Carpenter, Alfred Stieglitz, and other leaders in the non-doctrinal world of humane and progressive traditon of turn-of-the-century theosophy. A mind-opener!

This book is NOT a biography of Anselm Adams or a "how-to take your own Anselm Adams-like photos" DIY. It has minimal biographical information (e.g., only 2 pictures of AA, including the cover photo, no information on his marriage or children, etc.). It does have a lot on the philisophical background of AA and his friends that led them to take and value the kind of images they made and admired, and reproduces many images made by AA and friends. It's a good book for what it is, but before you buy it, make sure that this is what you want.