“Ansel Adams in Our Time” is Still a Definition of What Should Be These Times

Ansel Adams (American, 1902 – 1984). Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1960. Photograph, gelatin silver print. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Lane Collection. © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ansel Adams (American, 1902–1984), The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, 1932. Photograph, gelatin silver print. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Lane Collection, SC69746. ©️ The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Installation views photographed by Randy Dodson

Driving into Yosemite Valley, it’s likely you’ll encounter dozens of photographers gathered in the same locations, pointing their cameras in the same directions that Ansel Adams once did. He is a man whose name is synonymous, for many generations, with the art of photography, whose pictures spring to mind when contemplating the splendor of the American landscape. His images have become shorthand for a ubiquitous kind of photography that emphasizes the beauty and grandeur of the natural world. 

The exhibition Ansel Adams In Our Time, currently on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, rises to the challenge of revisiting the legacy of such a widely studied and exhibited artist, placing his work in direct conversation with his predecessors, contemporaries, and present-day image makers pushing the boundaries of landscape photography. The newer photographs, whether challenging, subverting, or building on Adams’ vision of photography and environmentalism, re-engage the viewer with the content, context, and artistry behind his most celebrated prints. Adams was a technical master and evangelist of his craft, but also a prolific teacher, writer, and conservationist who very early on in his career understood the power of the photographic image to communicate ideas with a wider audience. It’s why your parents may have had that Sierra Club calendar or framed poster of Half Dome hanging on their wall. Through Ansel Adams in Our Time, we are presented with a rare opportunity to contemplate his influence, the evolution of photography, and the fate of the landscapes he immortalized. —AN