Ansel Adams. Divine Performance - Tapa dura

"Anne Hammond's carefully documented book is the first major study of Adams's life and art since his own Autobiography. She provides a rich new way of looking at Adams as a person and as an artist." James Enyeart, Marion Professor and Director, Anne and John Marion Center for Photographic Arts, College of Santa Fe "Hammond examines the complexities of Adams's philosophical heritage, indeed, even its contradictions. Her understanding of Adams as both thinker and artist, her sensitivity to him as a creative person who was not necessarily clear or consistent in his thinking, makes this book an original and important piece of scholarship." Sandra S. Phillips, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Ansel Adams's magnificent photographs of the American wilderness are recognized and admired the world over. Adams is also a major cultural figure in American history, shaping many of our current views of the natural world through his compelling and accessible images. Despite his significance, little scholarly attention has been paid to Adams's contributions as an artist or his place in photographic history. This work addresses this gap by taking a look beyond the photographer's reputation as a Sierra Club environmentalist and examining in depth his life as an artist and the complexities of his creative vision. Photo historian Anne Hammond provides a nuanced discussion of the evolution of Adams's landscape art and the aesthetic significance of his work. To set his landscape photographs in historical and philosophical context, Hammond traces the development of Adams's prints in relation to his artistic consciousness. She also offers background on the contributions of scientific, literary and artistic individuals who inspired Adams's journey in the arts, including scientists and philosophers Joseph LeConte and Alfred North Whitehead, writers Edward Carpenter and Ella Young, and photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Minor White. The concluding chapter of the volume provides a detailed criticism of the photographer's best work and shows the relation between these images and their maker's ethical and artistic commitments.