There are few photographic artists whose works are more easily recognized than Ansel Adams. His glossy, starkly contrasted black and white photos of Yosemite National Park made the sightseeing attractions around Yosemite Valley into icons: Yosemite Falls, Half-Dome, and El Capitan. And those famous images made Ansel Adams famous, enabling him to dedicate his life to this style and the environment which he loved.
With those images so successfully engraved in the public’s consciousness, it’s hard to think of Ansel Adams working with any other style. But he did; his early work was done on parchment paper with warm ones and a soft focus, creating romantic photographs which had qualities similar to paintings as was the fashion during the first half of the twenties century. To showcase this different side of Ansel Adam’s work, a collection of eighteen photographs has been assembled and is currently on tour of the nation. The exhibit, “Ansel Adams: Early Works” is most interesting not merely for the dramatic difference in style, but also for the fact that these works reflect his initial experiences in Yosemite National Park, long before he, or the landscape would become famous.
Adams’ focus on inanimate subject matter was widely condemned at a time when the country was suffering through the Great Depression. But Ansel believed in his work involving nature and left the social recording and commentary to other photographers saying, “… mankind in general depends upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence." Judging by the millions of visitors taking Yosemite tours every year to witness the majesty in person which he so skillfully captured in his images, his assessment would seem to be sage and prescient.
