Ansel Adams: The Black-and-White Master, in Color

By Richard Lacayo Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009

Ansel Adams was the poet of the gray spectrum, the man who dipped the American sublime into the inkpot of black-and-white photography and by that means made it new again. So persuasive were his methods that because of him we tend to think of the national parks the way we think of the Great Depression, as something we can barely conceive of in color. He almost made us believe that the whole of creation comes in the palette of a cinder block and to be glad about it. Adams is so identified with black and white that most people would be surprised to learn that he started to shoot in color soon after Kodachrome was invented in the mid-1930s and that by the time of his death in 1984 he had produced nearly 3,500 color images. Though he allowed some of those pictures to be published in his lifetime, he never printed them himself, or at least not for the public. He didn't believe that the color processes of his day could produce results to compare with the rich visual deliberation, the fine-grained luxuriance of his work in black and white. To put it bluntly, he didn't think he could control the outcome with color, and for Adams control over the artistic process meant everything. But he valued the richness of color transparencies, looked forward to the day when it would be possible to print them to his own high standards, and came close to producing a book about color theory and practice that would include some of his own work.

There would be no book of exactly the kind Adams had in mind. But nine years after his death, a good number of his color pictures were published for the first time in Ansel Adams in Color, in a selection chosen by another great photographer, Harry Callahan. This year the book is being reissued with 20 additional pictures that have never been published before. So what kind of artist was he in color? The same kind as he was in black and white: a man attuned to nuance, rustling surfaces and gentle modulation, even when he was working in the most muscular natural settings. In the same way that he was turned off by harsh contrast in black-and-white pictures, he disliked strident color. What he was after were tones, colors you can't put a name to, indeterminate registers that shift in the retina and brain. Even his sunsets were powder-puff pink. Digital color correction now allows us to make fine adjustments in Adams' pictures to produce prints with subtleties that weren't possible in his lifetime. But can we be sure that pictures printed after his death give us just the colors he would have wanted? Of course not. He was an exacting man, and there's no way of knowing precisely what shade of gray-green or yellow-beige would have worked best for him or whether he was sure of what it should be until he saw it. He was smart enough to know that pictures are just fictions that point us back to realities with a fresh eye and that an artist is someone who adjusts the fictions to match his instincts. We value his pictures as much as we do because his instincts were first-rate, but all we can hope to do is approximate his intentions. Adams once wrote that "I have yet to see much less produce a color photograph that fulfills my concepts of the objectives of art." Actually, he produced quite a few. He just never got to see them as he wanted to. Can we? Maybe we can get pretty close. It's worth a try.

Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, 1953 One of the most highly recognized photographers of the 20th century, Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was known for his boldly printed, large format black and white images. Few are aware, though, that Adams worked extensively in color as well.

Tree, Barn, Near Livemore, California, 1950 In a career of 50-plus years, Adams pursued color photography for over forty of them, and he believed it to be the medium of the future. In addition to using it for commercial jobs, he shot color for magazines like Life, Horizon and Fortune. He also exhibited his color work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1950.

Mauna Kea from Mauna Loa, Hawaii, 1948 Adams felt closest to black and white photography, which can be manipulated to produce a wide range of bold, expressive tones, and he felt constricted by the rigidity of the color process. "Art implies control of reality, for reality itself possesses no sense of the esthetic. Photography becomes an art when certain controls are applied..."

Yellow Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1948 Adams wrote, "I believe that color photography, while astonishingly advanced technologically, is still in its infancy as a creative medium."

Sunset From Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, 1948 Despite his misgivings about the medium, Adams still pursued color, but remained dubious of his own efforts. "I have done no color of consequence for thirty years!" he wrote. "However, I have some color which is acceptable...The Kodachromes have lasted the best of all."

Church, Sunrise, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, 1948 In a 1962 essay describing his efforts in color, Adams noted the irony of our perceptions about the two media. "There is little or no 'reality' in the blacks, grays and whites of either the informational or expressive black-and-white image," he wrote, "and yet we have learned to interpret these values as meaningful and 'real.'"

WOW WOW Y REWOW!!!!!! Jeffrey Pine on Sentinel Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1948 In an article on color photography for Image magazine, Adams observed another paradox: "Esthetically, subjects possessing the least obvious color seem to come through best, not only in simulation of reality, but in sheer beauty of color in image." Comparen:

Church, Sunset, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, 1948 In a letter to Wally McGalliard about the image above, Adams wrote, "Thank you 10 9 x for the prints...You did a spectacular job with it. The old Kodachrome was pretty strong in purples, etc!!!"

Otra comparacin.

Shipwreck of the Ark at Salt Chuck, Near Juneau, Alaska, 1948 "Psychologically any one color is affected by other colors," Adams wrote, "by changes of light quality and intensity, by the inherent contrast of the scene..."

Pool, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona, 1947 Describing one experience in the field, Adams wrote, "I was camped in my car...usually sleeping on top of my car on the camera platform, which measured about 5x9 feet. Arising long before dawn, I made some coffee and reheated some beans, then gathered my equipment and started..."

Monument Valley, Utah, 1950 "Color, physically or psychologically considered, is extremely complex. While we have good reason to believe all persons with normal vision see colors the same way, the significance of colors may vary with each individual."

Cliffs of the Pali, Oahu, Hawaii, 1948 Looking into the future, Adams wrote, "I...tremble when I think of the coming tornado of 'color.'"

Pool, Kaibab Plateau, Arizona, 1947 Adams struggled against the technical limitations of the color photography of his day, but remained optimistic that one day, "astonishing developments await us in...[the] electronic image."