Ansel adams life biography

American photographer and environmentalist (–)

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, – April 22, ) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.

Adams was a life-long advocate for environmental conservation, and his photographic practice was deeply entwined with this advocacy. At age 14, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club. He was later contracted with

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Ansel Adams

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Who Was Ansel Adams?

Ansel Adams rose to prominence as a photographer of the American West, particularly Yosemite National Park, using his work to promote conservation of wilderness areas. His iconic black-and-white images helped to establish photography among the fine arts.

Early Life

Ansel Easton Adams was born in on February 20, , in San Francisco, California. His family came to California from New England, having migrated from Ireland in the early s. His grandfather founded a prosperous lumber business, which Adams’ father eventually inherited. Later in life, Adams would condemn that industry for depleting the redwood forests.

As a ung child, Adams was injured in the San Francisco earthquake of , when an aftershock threw him into a garden vägg. His broken nose was never properly set, remaining crooked for the rest of his life.

Adams was a hyperactive and sickly child with few friends. Dismissed from several schools for bad behavior, he was educated

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Ansel Adams, Photographer &#; Bio

By William Turnage, Reprinted courtesy of the author and Oxford University Press

This Ansel Adams biography was published by Oxford University Press for its American National Biography.

Ansel Adams in front of his most famous image, “Moonrise, Hernandez”

Adams, Ansel (Feb. 20 — Apr. 22, ), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of , and Adams’s father spent the rest of his life doggedly but fruitlessly attempting to recoup.

An only child, Adams was born when his mother was nearly forty. His relatively elderly pare