![]() He had few friends, but his family home and surroundings on the heights facing the Golden Gate provided ample childhood activities. Īdams was a hyperactive child and prone to frequent sickness and hypochondria. The home had a "splendid view" of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands. In 1907, his family moved 2 miles (3 km) west to a new home near the Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, just south of the Presidio Army Base. A doctor recommended that his nose be reset once he reached maturity, but it remained crooked and necessitated mouth breathing for the rest of his life. Then four years old, Adams was uninjured in the initial shaking but was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an aftershock three hours later, breaking and scarring his nose. One of Adams's earliest memories was watching the smoke from the fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Later in life, Adams condemned the industry his grandfather worked in for cutting down many of the great redwood forests. ![]() His paternal grandfather founded a prosperous lumber business which his father later managed. The Adams family came from New England, having migrated from the north of Ireland during the early 18th century. His mother's family came from Baltimore, where his maternal grandfather had a successful freight-hauling business but lost his wealth investing in failed mining and real estate ventures in Nevada. He was named after his uncle, Ansel Easton. He helped to stage that department's first photography exhibition, helped found the photography magazine Aperture, and co-founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.Īdams was born in the Fillmore District of San Francisco, the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray. For his work and his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.Īdams was a key advisor in the founding and establishment of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an important landmark in securing photography's institutional legitimacy. ![]() He was later contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to make photographs of national parks. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club. At age 12, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.Īdams was a life-long advocate for environmental conservation, and his photographic practice was deeply entwined with this advocacy. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. Ansel Easton Adams (Febru– April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.
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