Ansel Adams - Whats so great?

[LWW]

AA was the beta version of PhotoShop.

LWW

 

[danalec99]

Splendid! :lmao:

 

[santino]

Ansel Adams...THE ZONE SYSTEM.

Adams didn't invent the zone system at all.

 

[panzershreck]

ok so apart from the lack of artistic accomplishment, and the lack of emotion in his photos (make great calender pictures though), and the overrated reputation... what else is there?

i think this sums up a lot though:

Adams was the greatest because he was Adams.

 

[ksmattfish]

Diane Arbus, what's so great?
William Eggleston, what's so great?
Lee Friedlander, what's so great?
Minor White, what's so great?
Jackson Pollack, what's so great?
Picasso, what's so great?

Possibly someone else sees something you don't. Maybe they just have different taste. Try putting more effort into understanding Adams, or just move on. You don't like the same clothes, music, food, etc... than everyone else. Why would art be any different?

I never understood the excitement about Eggleston. It seemed to me that his body of work was interesting, but typical of early explorations in color photography that I see from people getting interested in photography; it's very similar to the color photography I saw in Photo 101 and 102 classes. Possibly he gets the credit for doing it first, but to me his style never seemed to grow or change or get better or more exciting. That he is often called the father of color art photography perplexed me enough that I began to study Eggleston. I'm finding as I learn about the person behind the photos, the photos are becoming more interesting. I'm not sure I get it yet, but I'm willing to keep looking.

 

[markc]

I feel the same way about Eggleston. His work seems to be just above "snapshots". But there is a sort of consistant style there that makes the images recognizable as Eggleston. Once I started to see that, I liked them more.

One of my theories about why people like certain work deals with familiarity. For most people, familiarity = comfort. People like it when they can look at an image and be able to tell who did it. If someone liked Adams, but was a big fan of Friedlander, they probably wouldn't be so keen if Friedlander did a landscape in the style of Adams, even though they like Adams's images. It's okay if Adams does it, but that's not Friedlander's kind of work. It throws things off.

 

[JC1220]

Try putting more effort into understanding Adams,

I think this is something few people with aspirations to be a fine art photographer or, even a photographer in general, fail to do: understand and learn the history of photography and its masters. Whether or not you like or dislike a body of work means little if don’t take the time to learn about what made that person tick or their processes. Adams was a wonderful photographer and his early photographs from the 30’s and 40’s are filled with emotion and feeling. This also happens to coincide with a period where he mainly contact printed and, in my opinion, after this time and his insistence on enlarging he appears not to grow as a photographer and I believe his work shows just that, there is a lack of emotion felt while viewing some of these later works nor the glow and tonal ranges seen in his prints of the early years. I believe it is a mistake to dismiss the early masters as it is a mistake to revere them to a point of emulation, there is so much to learn from them and ultimately affect your personal growth as a photographer, neglect the need to grow and you will fail to see.

As to who invented the zone system, it is true the Fred Archer wrote about and formed the basis of what we now know as the zone system prior to Adams.(Not the same Frederick Scott Archer who invented the colloidian process) Adams read his writings and I believe worked with or was in contact with Archer about them and Adams went on to refine it, going through several changes even up to a few years before his death.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Try putting more effort into understanding Adams,

This is working on the basis that there is something there to understand

 

[ShutteredEye]

I didn't say that. What I was saying was that sometimes people are seduced by the subject and though the photographer has very little input he gets praised for being good when it is the subject that does all the work.
This is something that you have to bear in mind when looking at photographs and judging them critically.

And Adams does deserve a place amongst the greats - it's just that some people rate him far higher than he deserves.

Wouldn't you agree that one of the most difficult things to do as an artist is to get out of the way of the subject?

To discredit an artist because he took photographs of beautiful subjects is foolish. You and I know that if we stood in the very footsteps of AA, our renditions fo the same subject matter would still widely differ from each other.

I think a big reason for AA's popularity is his work is easy to look at. Even the most naive of novices can stand in front of an Ansel Adams and appreciate the print. Further his style is fairly distinctive, and easy to remember. If you flash someone a high contrast black and white print of aspen trees and ask who they thought took it, they'll probably come up with his name.

It's like wine. Beringer white zinfandel is on the lips of every novice out there. Now, anyone with any nose for wine will tell you that BWZ is an ok wine, but maybe not that great. But still it enjoys popularity, because it's easy to drink, it has that distinctive pink color, and a name that sounds classy and easy to remember.

AA's prints allow people who don't know photography to feel like they do.

And there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, we should be studying his marketing strategies....

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Wouldn't you agree that one of the most difficult things to do as an artist is to get out of the way of the subject?

On the contrary - that is the easiest thing in the world to do. And that is just what Adams tended to do - certainly with his landscapes.
If the photographer 'gets out of the way' then you end up with just a photographic record: this is how it looked; this is what was there. This is what you try and do when you do Medical Photography or Forensic Photography. "Just the facts, ma'am".
The skill in this type of Photography is purely technical - total control of the medium. This can be admired but I wouldn't call it Art, or anything near.
To stop arguments along the lines of 'oh yes it is' or even worse 'art is in the eye of the beholder' consider this:
The ultimate in pure technical control is satellite surveillance photography. Everything is accurate to the 'n'th degree. It can produce some amazing, unusual and beautiful images. But they are produced by an automatic machine. Are the images Art? The argument 'art is in the eye of the beholder' would say 'yes'.
A machine can produce Art? Either your definition of Art is flawed or Art is nothing special.
One of the main axioms that defines Art is that the Artist interprets what he is representing. The subject is filtered through the Artist so that the end product is not a straight record but reveals it in a new light, in a new way. It makes us think afresh about the subject - and reveals to us something of the Artist.
Good Art tends to challenge our preconceived notions and should be an emotional, as well as an intellectual, experience. Like reading a novel or listening to music or seeing a play.
The mark of Great Art is that it changes us in some way, however minor or subtle. Any one who has suddenly come face to face with Michaelangelo's David, for example, should know what I am talking about.
Photography should be no different.
It is very easy, especially with modern technology, to produce an image. There is no trick to it - spy satellites do it every day. But it is not so easy to put yourself into a photograph, to see something unusual or strange that gives you an emotional charge and then convey this to a viewer.
It takes effort and hard work on the part of the Photographer. It takes effort and hard work on the part of the viewer. And too many people want the reader's Digest version.
Adams' work (or far too much of it) is the reader's Digest version. A viewer can stand in front of one of his pictures and not have to think. They are easily accessible by everyone because absolutely no effort is involved.
There is nothing wrong with this - but it doesn't make Adams an Artist. It makes him nearer to a spy satellite as his genius was in the darkroom.

To discredit an artist because he took photographs of beautiful subjects is foolish.

Quite right, but you make the mistake of considering a picture of something beautiful to automatically be 'Art'. And that someone who takes pictures of beautiful things is automatically and 'Artist'.
There is a big difference - as I keep repeating only to have people misunderstand - between Art and Beauty. They are not mutually exclusive but you can have the one without the other.

 

[ShutteredEye]

Hmmm, I've read through your argument concerning my "get out of the way of the subject" comment and I agree with what you said. You thought of it in a manner I wasn't. I guess I made this comment referring to those people that take an image and destroy the "image" that's within it trying to prove how great of a photographer they are. Does that make any sense? Many images I've seen are so overwrought and forced that it's just as tortuous to look at them. I guess I'm saying that at some point after all the composition and work you have to get out of the way and release the shutter--and it seems that Adams was able to do that rather well--like it or not.

 

[Rob]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans serif][SIZE=-1]In his lifetime, Ansel Adams became not only the best-known photographic interpreter of Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada and the Southwestern United States, but an environmentalist consulted by presidents and something of a national monument himself. . . . [Spaulding] presents Adams as an important artist who inherited, developed and transmitted significant ideas, in the form of images and political intervention, about the relations between human society and the natural environment."--Times Literary Supplement

[/SIZE][/FONT]Is the creation of a majestic landscape image, depicting the beauty of the wilderness and nature really not just conservationism in the style of an artist, rather than "art" with a pretext?

What was behind the man really, an intention to show the world natural beauty in the best and most accurate way? Is that artistically interesting to you?

I'm not particularly keen on "standard beautiful" shots.

Born Free and Equal is much more interesting to me, despite the fact it was completely lost on the US public at the time.

Just thought I'd chuck in an opinion!

Ansel Adams was a great artist as his work in the field of photography led to stunning images of landscapes which were so influential that the subject of the pictures was affected at a national level by the creation of natural parks and preservation orders. Therefore the preservation of the areas is doubly assured, in the real world and in the extremely accurate image by Adams.

Rob

 

[panzershreck]

There is nothing wrong with this - but it doesn't make Adams an Artist.

oh geez, an argument about what an artist is... far more ambiguous than what a "photograph" is, because an artist is the creator of a work of art, and what is art?

i can convey how gloomy a day is by shooting into fog with a blue bridge and water-soaked wood in the foreground, but how much of that was me? and how much of that was the natural world? maybe if i could control the colors, but i can't... all i can control is the exposure... and same thing goes towards say - drawing, i draw all the time, and there is a big element of "style" that can be controlled, i can draw everything in super-fine detail, or i can draw shapes, or i can just draw a few lines that convey everything... but how much of it is what i draw that makes a picture worth looking at?

there are many people who don't even consider photography a real art at all, because like you said: all you have to do is orient yourself and push a button, point being photographers have very little control over what they photograph, and even in a studio it's 50/50 unless you literally invent the subject from scratch, but it's still a 50/50 relationship with the subject, without it you have no photograph, with it and nothing else you don't have a good photograph

me, i have Adams' photos in a wall calender, which is fitting for his style of work, given the amount of control a photographer has, for what he chose to shoot, i think he did well... aside from all the categorical photography BS, he wasn't that far away from a street photographer which we praise for his wonderful rendition of active human subjects

what is art anyways?

 

[JC1220]

what is art anyways?

Without getting bogged down in huge matters of opinion, in relatively simple terms: "Art is about life, and the producing, doing, or act of Art is a deep expression of an individual’s response to Life, contained within a form of some sort."

Is some form of mechanized aerial photography or even computer program generated painting art? I would say no. There is no interaction between an artist and his life or expression there of. If all there was to being artist or photographer was to own a camera and the simple act of taking a photograph to be considered an artist, please take my cameras away. Just because you can point your camera at Half Dome doesn’t mean you have just made a photograph as good or better than Adams, as was said earlier there is far more to a photograph than a subject. It is more often the subtle rhythms within the photograph that make it great or exude deep beauty which really has little to do with the subject matter. Yes nature, or even man, provides us with some amazing opportunities, but the ability to capture the universal and communicate it to a viewer successfully comes with a deliberateness containing growth, technical mastery and mature vision. Not the simple act of clicking a shutter.

Unlike many other visual arts, there are extremely few young masters of photography. Why is this? Because maturity in seeing and vision takes growth which needs time. This is easy to see in ones own work, do you look back at photographs taken 6 months, a year, 10 years ago and say “that’s not as good as I thought”, or “I could have done better.” You have arrived at those feelings as a function of living.

 

[fightheheathens]

my 2 cents,

Mr. Van Rental argues that because in a landscape or nature shot, as opposed to the studio, you cannot control the elements and thus it takes less skill. I feel that is simply not true. The ability to take what you have and make it into a stunning shot via composition is and art all in of itself. maybe im a bad photographer, but there are many times where i have been presented with an absolutely stunning natural landscape yet my pictures of it still fail to convey they take my breath away moment of when i saw it with my own eyes. Granted i havent been a photographer for a long time, but i have seen other landscapes on this sight which despite the beautiful location probably still fail to convey what the photographer really felt when he saw it.

Further more who really has the authority to say, because an artist didnt create it, its not art. what if i feel that nature is art? think back to the painters who strove to immitate nature in their paintings, or the inventor of musical instruments all of who try to emmulate the human voice...the only truely natural instrument?
im sitting here looking at breaking ways at pebble beach by adams, just a shot of waves i guess. maybe to me it conveys the power of nature, lonelyness what ever the hundreds of feelings i get when i look at or am in nature? even if it only reminds me of those feelings, is the fact that it inspires them enough?

if not then what must art do to be art?

this is not meant to defent adams, this is a defence of nature as art and photographs of nature as art.


as a nature freak ive allways been inspired by it and often times i find still lives to really not appear as art to me. does that make still lifes not art?