The Untold Truth Of Ansel Adams

Photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) is best known for his magnificent shots of America's natural landscape and his devotion to environmental conservation. In almost every aspect of his life, he defied labels. His beliefs crossed parties and policy, and rarely did he cave to extremes — except when his beloved wilderness was at risk.

Adams was uncompromising on two issues. As the descendant of founding-stock New Englanders, he believed the Declaration of Independence's promise that "all men are created equal" was literal and sacrosanct. Second, he had no tolerance for seeing America's unspoilt lands turned into what he once described as "the outskirts of Las Vegas."

Adams' views put him in good company with President Theodore Roosevelt, making the photographer a typical product of that president's era — rugged and rough, yet cultured and nuanced. Roosevelt shared Adams' zeal to preserve America's virgin wilderness together with a firm belief that all were in fact created equal — even if America still had steps to take to reach that goal. Ultimately, Adams was American to the bone — and he lived it until his dying day.

The Adams family did not subscribe to an organized religion. In fact, Ansel Adams' religious beliefs could be described as an eclectic mix of the American transcendentalism of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson – people who believed one could encounter the divine in nature — and the idea from President Theodore Roosevelt's time that a "new" America was being forged in the pristine wilderness of the Western Frontier.

While Adams' father imparted some of these beliefs to his son, the photographer credited his Greek tutor, the Rev. Dr. Herriot, with his disdain for organized religion. Adams wrote in his autobiography that the two frequently debated the personal vs. institutional nature of religion. "Dr. Herriot assumed I went to church," he wrote. "It did no good to explain that I was an agnostic, to him a heathen. My disregard of conventional faith was incomprehensible to him."

Adams used evolution as an example. Dr. Herriot accepted the pre-Darwinian idea that the Earth was roughly 4,000 years old, while Adams accepted evolution and the fossil record, which his tutor dismissed as a test of faith. Dr. Herriot's obstinance convinced Adams that organized religion and its rigidity "all were at huge variance with the luminance of music, the revelations of philosophy and poetry, the freedom of the rolling hills and the ocean." This attitude echoed Emerson's essay "Nature," which bemoaned "innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers" rather than redeeming their souls in the beauty of God's creation.

In his autobiography, Ansel Adams described himself as a "hyperactive Sloppy Joe" who seriously needed structure in his life. Music turned out to be that needed structure when his father enrolled him in piano lessons with a woman named Marie Butler.

Butler, Adams wrote, appeared sweet and soft spoken, but when it came to teaching piano, she was merciless. Instead of letting him learn his preferred way, which no doubt would have involved letting him do what he felt like, when he felt like it, she drilled him incessantly. "She was very patient with problems of interpretation," Adams wrote. "But to not have the correct notes or rhythms was unforgivable." In short, she demanded perfection — something that would transfer to Adams' photography later on in life.

Just as with school, the drills bored Adams to death because they seemed completely pointless to him. But despite the boredom, Adams stuck with the lessons. One day, he realized he was actually getting better — and not just his piano playing. His ability to concentrate, even on things that seemed boring at first, improved too. By 1923, he claimed, he was on track to become a professional pianist, but ultimately settled on a career in photography instead. 

Early on in his career, Ansel Adams scraped by earning a living as a commercial photographer, writing in his autobiography (via Ansel Adams Gallery), "Our bank account would dwindle to a distressing level and I would grow deeply concerned, then ... the phone would ring and an assignment would present itself." One of those early jobs — his first paid professional assignment — was in 1920, when one Miss Lavolier, a kindergarten teacher at the Baptist Chinese Grammar School in San Francisco, asked Adams to photograph her class inside her classroom.

Adams arrived on site and realized a good indoor picture would require additional artificial light. The modern flashbulb, however, was not invented until 1925, so Adams, who had little experience with flash photography, had to generate flash using what today are regulated explosives — black powder cap detonators (the kind of stuff used in dynamite) and the highly flammable, spontaneous combustion-prone magnesium flash powder. These were not materials an inexperienced photographer should have been handling, especially around children.

The entire endeavor nearly ended in disaster. Adams used several times the necessary amount of powder, resulting in a flash he described as "apocalyptic," smoking out the room, and sending the kids running for the cover of their desks. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and after a visit from the San Francisco Fire Department, Adams decided to photograph the class outside using his preferred natural light — without the worry of rogue incendiary devices.

Although Ansel Adams opposed nuclear weapons, he supported the Second World War, which ironically ended with two nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only did Adams support the war — he viewed it almost as a sacred struggle for human equality.

In his book "Born Free and Equal," which depicted life in the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp, Adams wrote that the centerpieces of liberty were inalienable individual rights possessed by all, regardless of race or ethnic background. Racially tinged totalitarianism, embodied in the trio of Italy (the Fascist), Germany (the Nazi), and Japan (the Militarist) was the biggest enemy of these rights. Thus, America's purpose in World War II was to defend individual rights worldwide by any means necessary. By punishing the violators — especially those who cited ethno-racial justifications — the U.S. would send a message that atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking, the massacre at Lidice, and the Holocaust would not be tolerated.

Adams' book was censored to avoid depicting certain features of the camps, such as guard towers and barbed wire fencing. But the fact that Adams went to photograph Japanese American internees, who were deprived of their rights on the basis of ethnic origin, suggests that his support of the war as a way to eliminate racial hatred was genuine. A world divided by racial and ethnic strife of the kind seen in Europe and Asia was not exactly conducive to Adams' ideal of humans living in harmony with each other and nature.

The presidential portrait is usually an oil-on-canvas painting. But according to a 1979 Washington Post story, President Jimmy Carter broke with tradition, figuring it would cost less to do a photo shoot instead. One version credits Carter with the idea, as he could present himself as a hawk on wasteful spending. The National Archives credits Second Lady Joan Mondale, who wanted to patronize photography. Either way, there was no need to hire a painter or a photographer — Ansel Adams was willing to do it for free.

The photo shoot went swimmingly, even according to the exacting Adams, who revealed some of his more amusing moments to Vice President Walter Mondale. During that session, Adams opined that Mondale was very photogenic and mentioned that he had once photographed hotel magnate Conrad Hilton — his worst-ever subject because he only gave Adams five minutes of his time.

During the session with the president, Adams said he was unable to get Carter positioned just right, so he went and gently pushed Carter into place. The Secret Service immediately stopped him — touching the president was a potential security threat. Despite the incident, Adams wrote that the shoot was "a delightful personal experience" and that he "was amazed at the impression of relaxation, warmth and self-possession [Carter] gave at all times and which was so gratifyingly revealed in the portraits." Adams' photo of Carter served as his presidential portrait until 1982, when a traditional oil-on-canvas portrait was unveiled with little pomp and no ceremony.

Ansel Adams' environmental activism placed him at loggerheads with the Ronald Reagan administration, whose drive to privatize and deregulate the oil industry threatened Adams' accomplishments under the Carter administration. According to a 1983 Washington Post story, Adams lobbied Congress incessantly while writing daily op-eds in local newspapers about "the Pearl Harbor of our American Earth" Reagan would unleash on the country. The White House ignored him until he told Playboy, "I hate Reagan."

In response, Reagan sought a conversation with Adams, from which both men walked out seeming to respect each other. Their impressions, however, were very different. Adams liked the president. "He was very amiable, very sincerely cordial," he said. "He was a gentleman, he'd be a nice neighbor." But he added that it was impossible to find common ground due to "that stone wall when someone has a totally different concept of the world," suggesting the talk accomplished little.

The Reagan administration claimed that the president had addressed and "dulled" all of Adams' environmental concerns. Reagan also claimed that Adams had asked to meet him, rather than the other way around. The inconsistencies between the two testimonies can be summed up as what The Washington Post called "the president trying to cope with a critic, and a critic trying to cope with the president." Presumably, they both wanted to walk out looking like winners in the court of public opinion.

Ansel Adams opposed excessive use of fossil fuels not just due to pollution concerns, but because he thought unrestrained exploitation would burn through U.S. energy reserves. But he broke with the movement on nuclear power, telling David Sheff in a 1983 interview that it was a cheap, clean, fossil-fuel alternative. In the interview, Sheff brought up several concerns about nuclear power, chiefly whether radiation was a health and environmental hazard, whether it was safe — the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island was still a fresh memory — and whether nuclear waste could be properly disposed of.

Adams largely dismissed concerns about nuclear power, especially attempts to link civilian usage of nuclear technology with weapons of mass destruction. He appeared to suggest that the Three Mile Island accident was overhyped (it had negligible health effects on the surrounding area). Poorly trained nuclear technicians were the cause of the accident, not the technology itself. He pointed out that Europe had lots of nuclear plants without any problems, adding that Americans were more likely to die in car accidents than from nuclear meltdowns.

Adams identified private industry as the problem. "The danger is that most of the plants are privately operated and, therefore, under economic stress, and private companies are not likely to spend the money it takes to ensure that the plants are completely safe," he told Sheff. Government regulation and ownership of plants would prevent incidents like Three Mile Island — if people were willing to shoulder higher regulatory costs.

Ansel Adams was an environmentalist and an opponent of Big Oil, but he was also a crusader for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and their guaranteed rights. So, one wonders what Adams would have thought when pro-oil Texas Republican Congressman Steve Stockman (pictured) named a pro-First Amendment bill in the late photographer's honor.

The Ansel Adams Act would have protected photographers' First Amendment right to photograph on federal land by ensuring "Future 'Ansel Adams' [would] not have their paths blocked, regulated and made more expensive with fees and fines, or be threatened with arrest and seizure of their equipment." The law would have forbidden Washington from imposing restrictions or fees on photography on federal lands in places like national parks, except by court order in cases where national security was deemed at risk.

Although the bill had no chance of passing, since it was proposed on the penultimate day of the 113th Congress, it garnered support even among liberal commentators like Esquire Magazine, which praised Stockman's initiative as protecting property rights and ensuring photographers and filmmakers could hold federal agents accountable for bad behavior. Given how much Adams valued individual rights, and his political pragmatism in dealing with Ronald Reagan, it seems safe to conclude that he would have supported the bill — even if he would have opposed Rep. Stockman's other policies.