Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/19

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Subject: [Leica] Ansel Adams and Mike Johnson
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:27:03 -0500

At 08:45 PM 11/18/1999 +0000, Mike Johnston wrote:
>Are you guys talking about ANSEL Adams, the American landscape
>photographer??? In years of reading about Adams I have _never_ run
>across a reference to him owning or using a Leica; neither the words
>"Leitz" nor "Leica" rate an entry in the indexes to the Spaulding
>biography, the Alinder biography, or Adams's own _Autobiography_; the
>sparse few 35mm photographs of his I have ever seen published were all
>taken with Zeiss cameras; and when he visited Steiglitz in 1936 he
>reports (in the _Autobiography_) taking portraits of Steiglitz with "my
>35mm Zeiss Contax." 

Mike 

That's all very interesting, but Adams was the primary instructor at the
Leica School here in the US for around a decade or fifteen years after the
end of the War.  The ads Leitz ran (remember those golden days when Leica
actually made a serious effort at advertising?) about these schools quoted
Adams extolling the Leica RF and the uses he made of it.  Look in a LEICA
PHOTOGRAPHY (not LEICA PHOTOGRAPHIE, the American pub) of the period for
examples, or 35MM or U.S. CAMERA for examples.

As to his using the R4, I believe Jim Brick posted a note a while earlier
saying he had seen Adams using his R4.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!