This major exhibition of Ansel Adams work features images that I am familiar with but also many that were new to me. It focuses on one of Adams' favourite subjects: water. The exhibition explores water in all its forms, from turbulent views of rapids and waterfalls to quieter more restful scenes of rivers and lakes. As the exhibition title suggests there are images of water in all stages of the water cycle: clouds, mountain steams and also ice and snow in the mountains, lowland lakes and rivers and finally the sea. We also see images of geysers, notably 'Old Faithful' taken in Yellowstone National Park. The exhibition is divided into sections which cover all of these areas and each begins with a delightful quote from the great man. There are also excerpts from two documentary films which I have since found on You Tube and look forward to watching in full. The size of the images displayed ranges from tiny prints of some of his very early work to huge prints that he produced for the American Trust Company building in San Francisco in the 1950s. These were so large that the only way that he could print them he hung sheets of printing paper on the wall of his darkroom and then projected the image from his enlarger horizontally across the darkroom. Because the final size of the images was to be larger than any paper available he printed them in sections and carefully joined them together. If the prints are carefully observed the joins can still be seen. Unusually the photographs are sepia toned with egg-yolk brown to complement the warmth of the ornate interior of the room in which they were to be hung. All of the images in the exhibition are originals printed by Adams himself, with the exception of one.
We begin with his early forays into photography with his box brownie. At first his photographs are influenced by the Pictorialists who made pictures that looked like paintings or drawings. Edward Weston was to refer to the Pictorialists as those 'Fuzzy Wuzzies'. Gradually, and particularly after the First World War, a harder-edged style of photography developed which became known as Photographic Modernism. Adams was one of the leading figures in this new movement. We hear later in the exhibition of the F64 Group formed by Adams, Weston and Imogen Cunningham. The group took its name from f-stop 64, the smallest aperture available and which produced the sharpest images across the whole image. This characterised Adams work, especially after 1932.
We learn that Adams liked to take and display sequences of images. Examples of this in the exhibition are his Surf Sequence, Shipwreck series and a series of images of Old Faithful, the geyser in Yellowstone National Park.
When photographing the turbulence of surf or mountain streams Adams liked to use a fast shutter speed in order to freeze the spray. The exhibition tells us that he 'Froze Motion in Time'. Although he does use longer exposures to produce motion blur as in Early Morning Merced River, Yosemite Valley taken in 1950, he more often than not tires to freeze moving water, whether it be waterfalls, rapids or surf. I wonder if today with the trend in ultra long exposures, often facilitated by Lee's 'Big Stopper' ND filter, some photographers hark back to Pictorialsm with their painterly images. Personally I feel that both have a place and neither style should be adopted to the exclusion of the other in order to achieve variety. An example of an image where he really captures 'water frozen in time' is 'Wave' taken on Pebble Beach, California in 1968. The breaking surf is frozen beautifully and every drop can be seen; it sparkles against the light. The water is also perfectly exposed whilst the background is dark, almost black. We are told that he achieved this during the printing process, printing the shadows very dark so they are nearly back. The initial exposure is also carefully calculated using his 'Zone System'. In fact he frowned on exposure bracketing stating in the documentary that "Bracketing is a sign of insecurity. You don't really know what you are doing!".
Sometimes even his fasted exposure were not quick enough to freeze all motion and we see some slight motion blur in shots such as those of Upper Yosemite Falls. One quote says "In capturing bursting spray from rocks the photographer must be hair trigger alert for the moment." We are reminded of Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment'. Adams also says "A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.".
Adam's didn't always photograph expansive wide-angled views, often excluding the horizon and concentrating on the 'Intimate Landscape', reminiscent of Eliot Porter. The images of Snow and Ice in the exhibition are richly black and white and largely feature no horizon. There is even a section entitled Surface and Texture which, while not exactly macro shot, are very definitely close-ups. All are incredibly detailed. Another of his quotes in this section says, "We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.
In the section on Waterfalls we read that Adams believes that we can express experience and feelings through photography. He refers to this a s 'Equivalency', meaning that the image should express the photographer's emotional state at the time it was made. He says, "When I see something I react to it and I state it, and that's the equivalent of what I felt. So I give it to you as a spectator, and you get it or you don't get it, but there's nothing on the back of the print that tells you what you should get!". In Waterwheel Falls, Yosemite, c1948, Adams returns to the valley after an assignment in Hawaii which he didn't enjoy and disaffected with the art world. The picture shows the fall in spate; 'a thunderous, pulsating torrent, with crosscurrents erupting in fountains of spray. It conveys the elation he felt in the presence of nature and his delight at being back in Yosemite.'.
In the two documentary extracts we learn that Adams was one of the first people to realise that the environment would become a social issue. Before him photographers such as Dorothea Lange were social documentary photographers concentrating on the social issues of the time such as homelessness and the Great Depression. In fact Cartier-Bresson said, " While the world is going to pieces, Weston and Adams photograph rocks and trees. We also learn in the documentaries about the fastidious way he worked in the darkroom in order to produce prints just as he visualised them. He would often print the same negative several times with a different result each time. He likened photography to music, referring to the negative as the musical score which is fixed and the print as the orchestral performance which is open to interpretation. It is during the documentaries that we also learn that he prints for the highlights, especially in water, often reducing the shadow to nearly black. We hear him looking to the future and predicting the digital revolution and being excited by the idea.
Towards the end of the exhibition is one of my all time favourite Adams photographs is 'Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite c1937. One of his most famous images it is generally thought to be a dramatic image of Yosemite Valley. It is, however, a wonderful example of a photograph of water in all its forms: massive storm clouds, rain sweeping in, ice and snow on the high ground and Bridalveil Fall. Vapour, liquid, solid.
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