Ansel Adams (81 page)

 
62
       Ansel Adams to Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, July 21, 1948, in N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 568–569.

 
63
       Ansel Adams,
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 75–77.

 
64
       Ibid.

 
65
       Virginia Adams, interview with Nancy Newhall, May 12, 1947, CCP.

 
66
       N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 586–587.

 
67
       Ibid., 659–663.

 
68
       Ansel Adams to David McAlpin, February 7, 1941, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 129.

 
69
       In 2014, the appraised value of a near-mint condition
Portfolio One
is $125,000.

 
70
       Ansel Adams,
The Portfolios of Ansel Adams
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1981, revised edition).

 
71
       Ansel printed
Portfolio One
on a bromo-chloride projection paper developed in Metol-Glycin and lightly toned in selenium. Eight of the twelve images were contact-printed (that is, the negative was placed in direct contact with the printing paper—there was no enlargement), providing the maximum rendition of detail.

 
72
       N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 647; A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 287.

 
73
       N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 656–657. Newhall appears to have overestimated the number of negatives made for the Mural Project at about 600 (see the preceding chapter, “
Moonrise
”). When we reviewed all his negatives, the figure Ansel and I arrived at was 229.

 
74
       List of prints with prices for Ansel Adams Exhibition, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June–July 1949. From the museum’s files.

 
75
       N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 778.

 
76
       Copyright page for Ansel Adams,
My Camera in the National Parks
(Yosemite and Boston: Virginia Adams and Houghton Mifflin, 1950).

 
77
       A. Adams with M. Alinder,
Autobiography
, 103; A. Adams, “Conversations,” 500.

 
78
       Ansel Adams,
Portfolio Two: The National Parks & Monuments
, in
The Portfolios of Ansel Adams.

 
79
       Alfred Frankenstein, “Around the Local Art Galleries,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, “This World,” July 3, 1949, 9.

 
80
       Imogen Cunningham to Ansel Adams, August 1, 1949, CCP. Courtesy of the Imogen Cunningham Trust.

15. A DOCUMENTARY APPROACH

 
1
       Ansel Adams to Alfred Stieglitz, December 25, 1944, in Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds.,
Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1984
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1985), 153–155.

 
2
       Elizabeth Partridge,
Dorothea Lange, Her Lifetime in Photography, Grab a Hunk of Lightning
(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2013); Linda Gordon,
Dorothea Lange, A Life Beyond Limits
(New York: Norton, 2009); Milton Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978), 3–50; Sandra S. Phillips, “Dorothea Lange: An American Photographer,” in
Dorothea Lange: American Photographs
(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994), 11–12.

 
3
       Anne Whiston Spirn,
Daring to Look, Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 15–17; Dorothea Lange, interview with Richard K. Doud, May 22, 1964 (Washington, D.C.: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution), 57. Quote reproduced in Elizabeth Partridge, ed.,
Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life
(Washington, D.C., and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 104.

 
4
       Ansel Adams, “Statement for
Camera Craft
, 1933,” in Therese Thau Heyman, ed.,
Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography
(Oakland, Calif.: The Oakland Museum of California, 1992), 55–56; Ansel Adams, “Applied Photography,”
Camera Craft
April 1934, 173–183.

 
5
       Willard Van Dyke, “The Photographs of Dorothea Lange: A Critical Analysis,”
Camera Craft
(October 1934), 461–467; Richard Street,
Everyone Had Cameras
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 169–173.

 
6
       Meltzer,
Dorthea Lange
, 70–72.

 
7
       Beaumont Newhall,
Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman
(Fort Worth: The Amon Carter Museum, 1967), 6. All negatives in the National Archives are in the public domain.
Migrant Mother
is an American masterpiece. The cover of a recent excellent novel based on the making of this photograph sports a colorized and severely cropped version of Lange’s great photograph. To add to this desecration, at Costco the price stamp covers one of the mother’s eyes. It is, however, a wonderful read. Marisa Silver,
Mary Coin
(New York: Plume, 2014).

 
8
       Dorothea Lange, “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget,”
Popular Photography
46 (February 1960): 42, 126. Reproduced in Beaumont Newhall, ed.,
Photography: Essays & Images
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980), 262–265.

 
9
       Geoffrey Dunn, “Photographic License,”
Metro
10, no. 47 (Santa Clara, Calif., January 19–25, 1995): 20–24.

 
10
       Partridge,
Dorothea Lange, Her Lifetime in Photography,
21–22; Linda Gordon,
Dorothea Lange, A Life Beyond Limits,
235–243.

 
11
       Gordon,
Dorothea Lange
, 237.

 
12
       Dunn, “Photographic License,” 20–24.

 
13
       David and Victoria Sheff, “The Playboy Interview,”
Playboy
, May 1983, 72.

 
14
       Ansel Adams to Dorothea Lange, January 25, 1936, CCP.

 
15
       Adams, Eastman Studio Cash Book (July 30, 1931–January 6, 1936), CCP.

 
16
       Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
, 183.

 
17
       Ibid., 264.

 
18
       Therese Thau Heyman, “A Rock or a Line of Unemployed: Art and Document in Dorothea Lange’s Photography,” in Phillips,
Dorothea Lange: American Photographs
, 57 and 73 n. 13.

 
19
       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, 1978, 570. 352–353.

 
20
       Ansel Adams to Edward Weston, 1943, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 139–141; A. Adams, “Conversations,” 105.

 
21
       Nancy Newhall, “The Enduring Moment” [unpublished manuscript], 235.

 
22
       There is an exception: the U.S. Coordinator for War Information assembled an exhibition entitled “Photographs of America by Ansel Adams,” a diverse selection of imagery ranging from landscape to industry that was circulated in England. Soon afterward, though that country was still in the midst of war, a movement began to establish national parks there. It is probable that Ansel’s photographs had some influence on this effort. N. Newhall, “The Enduring Moment,” 208–209.

 
23
       A. Adams, “Conversations,” 23–24.

 
24
       John Hersey, “A Mistake of Terrifically Horrible Proportion,” in John Armor and Peter Wright,
Manzanar
(New York: Times Books, 1989), 50.

 
25
       An excerpt of Executive Order 9066, reproduced in Maisie and Richard Conrat,
Executive Order 9066
(San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1973), 5.

 
26
       Annie Nakao, “Remembering the 100th/442nd,”
San Francisco Examiner
, October 4, 1992, D-6.

 
27
       M. and R. Conrat,
Executive Order 9066
, 22.

 
28
       Ansel Adams,
Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California
(New York: U.S. Camera, 1944), 29; William H. Michael, “Manzanar National Historic Site,” in Wynne Benti, ed.,
Born Free and Equal
(Bishop, Ca.: Spotted Dog Press, 2002), 27–29; Masumi Hayashi, “American Concentration Camps,”
See: A Journal of Visual Culture
1, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, Winter 1995): 32–43.

 
29
       Armor and Wright,
Manzanar
, 89.

 
30
       Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
, 240.

 
31
       Jasmine Alinder,
Moving Images, Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 24–26.

 
32
       “Internment Camp Site Preserved in Owens Valley,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, April 28, 1995, A-26.

 
33
       Mary Austin and Ansel Adams,
The Land of Little Rain
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 110.

 
34
       Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
, 238–245.

 
35
       Roger Daniels, “Dorothea Lange and the War Relocation Authority,” in Partridge,
Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life
, 49.

 
36
       Meltzer,
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life
, 241.

 
37
       Archie Miyatake, “Manzanar Remembered,” in Benti, ed.,
Born Free and Equal
, 15–23; Graham Howe, Patrick Nagatani, and Scott Rankin,
Two Views of Manzanar
(Los Angeles: Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, UCLA, 1978), 10–11.

 
38
       A. Adams, “Conversations,” 25.

 
39
       Karin Becker Ohrn,
Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition
(Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 146, 148.

 
40
       The two dead were Ito and Kanagawa. Michi Nishiura Weglyn,
Years of Infamy, The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 312, n. 3; and Jasmine Alinder,
Moving Images,
47–48.

 
41
       Pete Merritt (son of Ralph Merritt, who lived at Manzanar), interview with the author, September 25, 1989; A. Adams, “Conversations,” 23–24.

 
42
       Ansel Adams to Nancy Newhall, 1943, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 143–145.

 
43
       Ansel Adams to Ralph Merritt, October 16, 1943. Letter bound into Merritt’s personal copy of
Born Free and Equal
, author’s collection.

 
44
       Ansel Adams to Ralph Merritt, October 22, 1943, 10:15
a.m
. Telegram bound into Merritt’s personal copy of
Born Free and Equal
.

 
45
       Jasmine Alinder,
Moving Images
, 48, 73.

 
46
       Richard Steven Street, “Photographs of Truth and Propaganda,”
Everyone Had Cameras, Photography and Farmworkers in California, 1850–2000
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2008), 316–317.