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ANSEL ADAMS
These three paragraphs give background information about Ansel Adams. Because this information is a summary of primary sources, it is called a SECONDARY SOURCE.
Ansel Adams was an American photographer who lived from 1902-1984. Adams used his talents and skills in photography to help people become more aware of environmental conservation. The United States Department of Agriculture defines conservation as "the careful maintenance and upkeep of a natural resource to prevent it from disappearing."
Adams was concerned that Americans were losing their connection to the natural world, and he used his photography to support the work of the Sierra Club, an environmental group. He was also hired by the National Government to take photographs of National Parks. In 1980, Adams was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of his work with conservation.
Adams tried to capture the way that light changed the way a landscape looks. A landscape includes the physical features of an area. To Adams, landscapes were always changing. Most of his photographs were taken in black-and-white.
EXAMPLES OF ANSEL ADAMS' LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHS & Ansel Adams' Quotes
These quotes come from Ansel Adams - they are his own words. The photographs are exact copies of the photographs Ansel Adams took. Because the quotes and photos come from Ansel Adams himself, they are called PRIMARY SOURCES.
"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer."
Ansel Adams
"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: 'Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize [the finished photograph] - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?'"
Ansel Adams. The Best of Popular Photography, by Harvey V. Fondiller
Canyon De Chelly National Monument, Arizona
Ansel Adams, 1942
Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Ansel Adams, 1941
3. "Photography is a language."
Ansel Adams. Conversations With Ansel Adams, p. 66
4. "Ten people can go to exactly the same scene and get ten totally different images, although they might have the camera in the same position."
Ansel Adams. Conversations with Ansel Adams, pg. 14
5. "I don’t think influences are always very obvious. I think that you never know what’s going to influence you."
Ansel Adams. Conversations with Ansel Adams, pg. 58
6. "It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."
Ansel Adams
7. "Ask yourself, 'Why am I seeing and feeling this? How am I growing? What am I learning?' Remember: Every coincidence is potentially meaningful. How high your awareness level is determines how much meaning you get from your world. Photography can teach you to improve your awareness level."
Ansel Adams
8. "You don’t improve nature. You reveal your impression of nature or nature's impact on you.”
Ansel Adams
9. "The whole world is, to me, very much 'alive' -all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can’t look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life-the things going on-within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood. "
Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams, Letters, p.129
10. "A photograph is an instrument of love and revelation that must see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live in all things."
Ansel Adams. 150 Years of Photography
"Formations, a few of many natural formations at Carlsbad Caverns." Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico.
Ansel Adams, 1941
"The Tetons - Snake River," Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Ansel Adams, 1942
11. "Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."
Ansel Adams
12. "Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art."
Ansel Adams
13. "Some photographers take reality...and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation."
Ansel Adams
14. "A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed."
Ansel Adams
15. "I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us."
Ansel Adams
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Ansel Adams, 1941
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