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Ansel Adams Center for Photography

© Judith Stock

Ansel Adams has been called the greatest and most prolific photographer of Western landscape. His camera lens captured the spirit of the American West with subjects like the Big Sur coastline, the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park, and the American National Parks. Well-know favorites are Clearing Winter Storm; North Dome; El Capitan, Yosemite National Park; and Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

Born in San Francisco in 1902, Ansel Easton Adams was the only child of Olive and Charles Adams. With an inquisitive mind, Adams rebelled against the structured school environment, his parents found a solution by hiring private tutors to further his education. During the Panama-Pacific Exposition his father gave Adams a pass to the exposition, which he often attending daily. A lifelong conservationist, Adams served as the director of the Sierra Club for many years. Although Adams is widely known for his western landscape, he is less well know for his engaging portraits of ordinary people.

In 1940, Adams helped to found the first museum collection of photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Established by Adams in 1946, the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, was the first school to teach photography as a profession.

During WWII, Adams documented life behind the barbed wire at Manzanar, the Japanese relocation camp, later collection in a book titled 'Born Free and Equal.' Forbidden to photograph the guard stations or the barbed wire fences, Adams captured the loss of freedom with shots of food lines, portraits of internees, and tedious rows of tar-paper barracks set against the Sierras.

The recipient of three Guggenheim grants to photograph the national parks between 1944 and 1958, he was a commercial photographer for 30 years.

In a letter to a friend, Adams stated "Art is both the taking and giving of beauty; the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit." Ansel Adams passed away in 1984 in Carmel, California.

The Ansel Adams Center for Photography opened in 1987 in San Francisco, California is dedicated to displaying both contemporary and historical photographs. One of the five galleries is devoted to Adams' work, the other galleries host changing exhibits. The museum includes a photo library, a bookstore, and a circulating and permanent collection of Adams' photographs.

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