color

Many reviewers make quite clear a fact about Ansel Adams regarding his own colour photography: That he did not want it published, for his own lack of control over the medium was substandard to the exacting methods he employed in his black-and-white prints. Without reservation, agreed.

But what most of Ansel Adams' most fervent admirers won't admit was that this book of colour prints made from transparencies belie the legendary artist's alleged "genius" for composition. Many of the compositions within are colour versions of famous black-and-white prints, the most famous being Half Dome at Yosemite.

I wish that aspiring photographers' introduction to Ansel Adams be similar to that of a Japanese photography assistant I once employed. She had never seen Adams' work (not as popular in the Far East as in the States) prior to this book. Her words regarding this book were "he takes pleasant photographs of pretty subjects in nature." I later introduced her to Adams' black-and-white "greatest hits" that Little, Brown, also published. Her assessment: "His compositions are generally conventional, but not novel. But, with a red filter while shooting and many darkroom methods and formulas, he uses technique to bring drama to his prints."

Ditto. It was refreshing to hear this opinion of Adams, because my friend did not have the yoke of artistic correctness hanging about her neck to remind her to speak of Adams in reverent, hushed, tones as some great "master" as though he were the photographic equal of Rembrandt, Vermeer or Rodin.

What Adams' admirers most fear about this book is that it will lay waste to all the decades of carefully designed PR Adams' publicity machine and his heirs have promulgated in their hagiographic transmogrification of a pretty good artist and a peerless technician into "St. Ansel."

The truth of the matter was that Ansel Adams made pretty pictures of pretty landscapes. And, that's what you'll get in this book. If you want the illusion of great art, turn to any of his volumes in black-and-white.

But, if you want truly great, earth-shattering black and white photography that inspires both intellect and emotion, then turn to the true masters: Walker Evans, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Robert Frank and Leni Riefenstahl.

At first, I thought I would buy this book to complete my Ansel Adams collection, despite all the bad reviews. I found this book in a library and changed my mind. This book is not worth its price for 3 reasons.
1. The quality of the color prints is very bad. The colors have faded, probably because the pictures were taken decades ago and the color technology was not good back then. Don't let the cover fools you, it is probably the best one in the whole book.
2. The reproduction is even worse. The pictures are so small you can barely make out the details.
3. Adams took a very different approach for his color photographs. The viewpoint he chose is narrow and lacking in perspective, the two most serious sins in landscape photography.
It makes me think that, instead of trying to make a reader like Adams' color photographs, the publisher of this book is trying very hard to make sure that a reader will hate them - just to prove Adams' own point.
If you still want a book on Ansel Adams' color photograhs, wait until a better book comes along. This book is not even worth considering.

"I can truthfully say I can remember only two or three color photographs that are worth remembering." -- Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams long felt that color photography was not art and not consistent with his vision of his own photography. What we have in this volume are almost totally unpublished and unexhibited images from his transparencies that he chose not to publish or exhibit. In other words, these are mostly his rejects. So, this is like pawing through his working files of sketches rather than his finished work, in an unauthorized way. How does that make you feel? Hmmm.

For me, the benefit of this volume was to better understand the brilliance of how his processing of black and white images played into the success of his best work. This book contains 50 images that clearly do not have the full Ansel Adams feel and impact.

The strength of this volume is the plenitude of material on what Adams had to say about color photography in general and his own. These points are nicely characterized in the essay by James L. Enyeart. One of the key problems for Adams was that he could "see" the final black and white image he wanted to create in his mind before taking a photograph, but could not "see" the color image in advance. He was not one to take hundreds of exposures hoping to have one or two turn out to be interesting. The art of photography for him was always a deliberate one, not an accidental process. While many color photographers used Polaroid stills as tests in this way, Adams did not want to do so.

Another problem was that early color processing did not allow him the control over the final image that black and white processing did.

Perhaps the ultimate problem was that "the most difficult subject for color photography was landscape." "The image -- to the photographer -- is a very different experience from what the viewer might receive from it." Think of a photograph then, as "a simulation of a perception of the world around us . . . ." A color photograph tended to destroy Adams' preference for understatement, and desire to show subtle connections. In fact, you will often see poor photography literally shouting with color that overwhelms the senses to no purpose.

Harry M. Callahan took on the thankless task of picking out some images to put in the book. He did this solely on aesthetic grounds, reflecting his own taste. While I do not know what he did not select, I was interested to see that a few works seemed to carry off Adams' desire for subtlety in new ways by showing additional detail in the shadows that are missing in his parallel black and white images. These works include:

Yosemite Falls, c. 1953

Green Hills, c. 1945

Mount McKinley, Grass, 1948

Pool, 1947

El Capitan, Texas, 1947

Waimea Canyon, 1948

Clearing Storm, Yosemite, c. 1950

Detail of Mammoth Pool, Yellowstone, 1946

Mono Lake, 1947

Bad Water and Telescope Pool, Death Valley, c. 1947

The Grand Canyon, 1947

If you want to see Ansel Adams' best work, skip this book. If you want to understand why his black and white work is so great, take a look at this book.

Whether you decide to look or not, I have a challenge for you. Do you have anything in your files that is not intended for the public to see? Take a lesson from the experience of this book and destroy that material today.

Edit down to the best!