Ansel Adams (71 page)

 
31
       Ansel Adams to Charles Adams, June 8, 1920, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 6–8.

 
32
       Virginia and Ansel Adams,
Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley
(San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1940), 45.

 
33
       
Diamond Cascade
is reproduced in A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 72.

 
34
       H. Wallach, “Bromoil Process,”
The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography
, 62; Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 17–19.

 
35
       
Sierra Club Bulletin
11, no. 3 (1922), plates XCI and LXXXV.

 
36
       The earliest book in which Ansel’s photographs appear is Katherine Ames Taylor,
Lights and Shadows of Yosemite
(San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1926).

 
37
       
Overland Monthly
78, no. 6 (December 1921): 23; R. R. Greenwood, “Whisperings,” ibid. A poem by Ansel’s uncle Dr. William L. Adams, who had died in 1919, appeared two pages earlier.

 
38
       This is how Ansel usually described the situation when he lectured.

 
39
       A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 160–161.

 
40
       Both the photograph and its verso with Ansel’s handwritten price list are reproduced ibid., 161. Ansel did not purchase his Korona view camera with its 6½ x 8½-inch format until about 1923, but his price list of prints for the Baptist Chinese Kindergarten is written in his child’s hand rather than in the studied, flowing script he had achieved by 1923, which dates this assignment to about 1920. The 6½ x 8½-inch camera was probably borrowed for the occasion.

 
41
       A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 73.

 
42
       Ibid.

 
43
       A. Adams, “Conversations,” 256–258. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

 
44
       Ibid.

 
45
       Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 17–19.

 
46
       Ibid.

 
47
       Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, “Photography,”
Quarterly Review
101 (April 1857): 442–468. Reprinted in Beaumont Newhall,
Photography: Essays & Images
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980), 91.

 
48
       Peter Henry Emerson,
Photograms of the Year 1900
, reprinted in Beaumont Newhall,
The History of Photography
,
from 1839 to the Present Day
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949; rev. ed. 1980), 105.

 
49
       Sue Davidson Lowe,
Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).

 
50
       Doris Bry,
Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer
(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1965), 14.

 
51
       Alfred Stieglitz, “The Photo-Secession,” reprinted in B. Newhall,
Photography: Essays & Images
, 167.

 
52
       Edward Steichen,
A Life in Photography
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), unpaginated.

 
53
       Sadakichi Hartmann, “A Plea for Straight Photography,” reprinted in B. Newhall,
Photography: Essay & Images
, 185–188.

 
54
       Bry,
Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer
, 15.

 
55
       Steichen,
A Life in Photography
; Grace M. Mayer, “Biographical Outline,”
Steichen the Photographer
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1963), 69–75.

 
56
       Maria Morris Hambourg,
The New Vision: Photography Between the Wars
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 7.

 
57
       Sarah Greenough, “Paul Strand, 1916: Applied Intelligence,” Sarah Greenough,
Modern Art and America, Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries
(Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000), 247–259.

 
58
       Alison Nordström, “Lewis Hine,”
Lewis Hine from the Collections of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
(New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2012).

 
59
       Sarah Greenough,
Paul Strand: An American Vision
(New York and Washington, D.C.: Aperture Foundation and National Gallery of Art, 1990), 32–33. A finely printed selection of Strand’s photographs, including those mentioned, are reproduced in this book
.

 
60
       Paul Strand, “Photography,”
Seven Arts
2 (August 1917): 524–525, reprinted in B. Newhall,
Photography: Essays & Images
, 219–220.

 
61
       Paul Rosenfeld,
Musical Chronicle (1917
–
1923)
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923). Inscribed in this book in Ansel’s library, in his own hand, is, “Ansel E. Adams from Mrs. Sabin—Dec. 25–1925.” Rosenfeld was a music critic in New York and considered a member of the Stieglitz circle. He was the editor of
Seven Arts
when Strand’s essay, “Photography,” was published.

 
62
       Adams with M. Alinder,
Ansel Adams: An Autobiography
, 32–33.

 
63
       Ibid., 145.

 
64
       Ibid., 32–37.

 
65
       Ibid., 34.

 
66
       Ansel Adams, foreword to Cedric Wright,
Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth
, Nancy Newhall, ed. (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960), 9.

 
67
       Edward Carpenter,
Angel’s Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and Its Relation to Life
(London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1898), 42–45, 64.

 
68
       Edward Carpenter,
Towards Democracy
(London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1909), 260–261.

 
69
       Adams,
The Role of the Artist in Conservation
, 8; A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 381–385.

 
70
       Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 30, 1925, reproduced in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 25–26.

 
71
       N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 34–35.

 
72
       Nancy Newhall dates the meeting precisely to April 10, 1927, in
The Eloquent Light
, 47, the exact day that I believe Ansel made
Monolith.
However, Albert introduced Ansel to the poet Robinson Jeffers, who presented the photographer with an inscribed volume of
Roan Stallion
to mark the occasion, dated June 26, 1926, indicating that the Albert-Ansel meeting took place months earlier than she believed.

 
73
       Catherine A. Johnson, wall label for exhibition
A Time of Change: Northern California Women Artists
,
1895
–
1920
, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1991.

 
74
       Oscar Lewis,
A Day with AMB
(San Francisco: privately published, 1932), unpaginated, in the collection of Stanford University.

 
75
       Virginia Adams remembered that much of her jewelry and combs for her hair, as well as a variety of objets d’art in her home, all came from Albert. Every time she saw him, he would extract some bauble from his pocket for her. She found him sweetly endearing.

 
76
       A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 84. Although largely unknown today, Ina Coolbrith was a popular San Francisco poet in the later nineteenth century and was appointed California’s first Poet Laureate at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Ben Tarnoff,
The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
(New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 32–36, 254.

 
77
       Ibid., 81–82.

 
78
       Ibid. Today, a portfolio of
Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
that is in mint condition is valued at $200,000.

 
79
       Lewis,
A Day with AMB.

 
80
       N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 47.

 
81
       A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 82.

 
82
       N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 30.

 
83
       “July Contributors in Brief,”
Overland Monthly
85, no. 7 (July 1927).

 
84
       Gump’s hired Ansel in 1929. Nancy Newhall, Notes for
The Eloquent Light
, CCP.

 
85
       Dorothea Lange, “The Making of a Documentary Photographer,” an oral history conducted 1960–1961 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1968, 113, 115. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

4.
MONOLITH

 
1
       Charles Adams to Ansel Adams, July 5, 1922, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds.,
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images
,
1916
–
1984
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 13–15.

 
2
       Anne Adams Helms,
The Descendants of David Best and Jane Eliza King Best
(Monterey, Calif.: Anne Adams Helms, 1995), 42–63.

 
3
       In 1906, Yosemite’s superintendent used Best’s Studio as an example of “flimsy construction work in the valley.” Linda Wedel Greene,
Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources
(Yosemite National Park: U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987), 468.

 
4
       Both Harry Cassie Best paintings are reproduced in Helms,
The Descendants of David Best and Jane Eliza King Best
, 55.

 
5
       Anne Rippey Best died July 9, 1920.

 
6
       Virginia Adams, interview with the author, May 9, 1989.

 
7
       Ansel Adams, “Conversations with Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1987, 228. Virginia Adams in conversation with the interviewers. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

 
8
       Ansel Adams to Charles Adams, July 7, 1922, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 16.

 
9
       Nancy Newhall,
The Eloquent Light
(Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1980), 37.

 
10
       Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, September 28, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 17–19.

 
11
       Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, March 26, 1923, transcription by Nancy Newhall, CCP.

 
12
       N. Newhall,
Eloquent Light
, 42.

 
13
       Ansel Adams to Virginia Best, November 15, 1923, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 19–20.