Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-03-06)

66 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk

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(^) ANSEL
(^) ADAMS,
(^) THE
(^) TETONS
(^) AND
(^) THE
(^) SNAKE
(^) RIVER,
(^) GRAND
(^) TETON
(^) NATIONAL
(^) PARK,
(^) W YOMING,
(^1942)
(^) U.S.
(^) NATIONAL
(^) ARCHIVES
(^) AND
(^) RECORDS
(^) ADMINISTRATION
Gemma Padley is a writer and editor on photography and a former Amateur Photographer Features Editor. Her clients, past and present, include: British Journal of Photography, Elephant
magazine, AnOther Magazine, the BBC, Magnum Photos, Hoxton Mini Press, The Telegraph, Time LightBox and the RPS Journal.
S
urely the most famous landscape
photographer ever to have lived,
Ansel Adams (1902-84) had an
extraordinary ability to capture
the sublime in an image. His photographs
of the American wilderness are instantly
recognisable: each one is a masterclass in
how to subtly and skilfully combine tones
of black, white and grey.
As every landscape photographer will
know, Adams developed and used the zone
system to help him achieve tonal balance
across every image, and was an advocate of
‘straight photography’, which privileges
sharp focus and detail. Though Adams tried
his hand at colour photography during his
long career, black & white remained his
fi rst and only love. ‘I can get – for me – a
far greater sense of “colour” through a
well-planned and executed black & white
image than I have ever achieved with
colour photography,’ he once remarked.
By the time Adams, who was also a
committed and passionate
environmentalist, took this photograph of
the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains
(1942) he had been making photographs
in his beloved wild America since his
teenage years, having regularly visited
Yosemite National Park since 1916. The
tonal balance and contrast of this
photograph is exemplary. The light dances
lightly on the water’s surface while the
sun’s rays begin to break out from behind
dark clouds and tickle the tops of the
mountains. The composition, with the
river effortlessly leading the eye through
the landscape to the great beyond, is
perfectly judged. As Adams’s business
manager and biographer William Turnage
wrote, his images ‘sought an intensifi cation
and purifi cation of the psychological
experience of natural beauty’.
Visualisation
Adams is a photographer for whom the
term ‘visionary’ was made. Despite being
obsessed with technical precision he is
renowned for capturing how a subject felt
to him, visualising how he wanted a
picture to look before taking it thanks to a
Final Analysis
Gemma Padley considers... ‘The Tetons and the Snake
River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming’, 1942, by Ansel Adams
Photo Critique
technique known as visualisation. As he
wrote in his autobiography: ‘The
visualisation of a photograph involves the
intuitive search for meaning, shape, form,
texture... The image is formed in the mind

• is visualised – and another part of the
  mind calculates the physical processes
  involved in determining the exposure and
  development of the image of the negative.’
  The act of making a photograph was, for
  Adams, not about duplicating reality, but
  rather to do with the execution of a series
  of decisions by the photographer, among
  them placement of the camera, the lens
  used, the exposure and the way the image
  was printed. ‘The exhilaration, when
  anticipation, visualisation, mind,
  equipment and subject are all behaving, is
  fantastic,’ he wrote. Anyone who has
  waited patiently for the stars to align when
  making a landscape photo can surely relate.
  This image, among his most famous, was
  in fact created as part of a commission he

received from the US Department of the

Interior in the early 1940s to photograph

the country’s national parks and produce

murals to adorn the walls of the

department. It was also one of the 115

images included on The Voyager Golden

Records carried by the Voyager spacecraft

in 1977 (the records contained sounds and

images used as examples of human life and

culture, should any inquisitive extra-

terrestrial life want to know).

In an age where the natural world is

being destroyed at a devastatingly rapid

rate, Adams’s photograph, like many others

he made, is a reminder of how wonderful

and precious the world is. It also reminds

us how diligence, patience and honouring

the craft of photography can result in

images that really matter and may

stand the test of time.

The picture is featured in Look at This if You Love Great

Photography (Ivy Press, £14.99), published in March

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