Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), American photographer, whose photographs focus on the landscape of the American Southwest. Born in San Francisco, he was inspired by a 1916 trip to Yosemite, California, to photograph in black and white the majesty of the American wilderness. His pictures show raw mountains, harsh deserts, enormous clouds, and towering trees in sharp detail dramatized by light and shadow. In 1932 Adams, along with Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and others, was one of the founders of f/64, a group of photographers who championed the sharp-focus, naturalistic aesthetic, known as “straight” photography, that had been pioneered by Paul Strand, although its antecedents can be found in such 19th-century photographers as Timothy O'Sullivan.

Adams held his first major exhibition in San Francisco in 1939. He started the first academic department in photography, at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and published the Basic Photo-Books series on technique. Collections of his photographs include Taos Pueblo (1930), Yosemite and the High Sierra (1948), This Is the American Earth (1960, with others), and Yosemite and the Range of Light (1979).