Re: [Leica] Ansel Adams Anecdote

[Darrell Jennings <darrell_jennings@yahoo.com>]

I was fortunate to attend the Ansel Adams workshop in
Yosemite in 1978.  He had some of the greatest
photographers in the world teaching, and he taught as
well...every day. At his age and level of prestige he
could have simply made an appearance and put his name
on the workshop, but that was not his style. 

I found out about the workshop by calling him at home
at his listed phone number.  His wife Virginia
answered and was happy to send me information on the
workshop.  When I was in Yosemite I discovered that he
was often called at home by photographers that were
having trouble printing an image.  He'd take the calls
and try to be helpful.  He was a true gentleman, and
very passionate about his art.  

He was so successful in his later years that some see
his work as a cliche, but I suspect if you had never
seen one of his prints on a $10 poster, and simply
encountered the real thing in an art gallery you would
be astounded.  

He contributed a lot to the art of photography, not
only by getting it accepted as art, but also by a
thousand chance encounters where he was helpful to
young enthusiastic photographers learning their craft.


Oddly, my first encounter with Leica was at the
workshop.  One of the instructors was in the middle of
teaching an outdoor session and had to pause for a
moment to rush over and take a few shots of someone
passing by. She was never seen that week without at
least two Leica M's around her neck, even when
teaching at a workshop thought of as big format.  I
was impressed with her then, and never forgot how
quickly Mary Ellen Mark could react with those
Leica's.  I remembered it 22 years later when I bought
mine.DJ

- --- Bill Clough <bill_clough@yahoo.com> wrote:
> TEXAS
> CORPUS CHRISTI
> 07 May 2002
> 
>         The recent thread concerning Ansel Adams
> reminds me
> an afternoon in Houston in the mid-1970s. For some
> inexplicable reason, I was invited to attend a
> couple of
> hours with large-format photographers as we
> talked--well,
> listened--to Ansel Adams.
> 
> 	I don't remember why Adams was in Houston. George
> Honeycutt, the chief photographer of the Houston
> Chronicle,
> said he had arranged for me to attend and so I went.
> 
> 	There I sat, in a conference room in the hotel next
> to the
> Galleria, feeling terribly out of place with my
> black Leica
> M4 around my neck, surrounded by ardent 4x5
> photographers
> hanging on to every word as Adams expounded at
> length, from
> memory and from experience, about his zone system.
> 
> 	In the group was a young man who photographic fame
> only
> could be described as meteoric. His advertising
> color work
> was predominately displayed in books and magazines.
> 
> 	While the rest of us seemed to hold Adams in high
> esteem,
> this slightly portly photographer seemed to be
> barely
> restraining himself. Finally, he simply couldn't
> keep his
> peace any longer. When Adams came to the end of a
> sentence,
> this prima donna burst in.
> 
> 	“Well, Mr. Adams,” he said in a slightly
> sanctimonious
> voice, “at major magazines, such as ‘Better Homes
> and
> Gardens,’ all this zone system has been replaced by
> computers. You take one transparency for the
> highlights,
> one for the mid-tones and one for the shadow
> details. You
> then just let the computer combine the three.”
> 
> 	Adams remained silent during this un-invited
> lecture and,
> when the photographer was finished, Adams picked up
> exactly
> where he had left off, by quietly suggesting:
> 
> “Perhaps that’s why so much of the color we see
> these days
> is so ghastly.”
> 
> 	When Adams died, I recounted the incident in an
> article
> for the local National Professional Photographers
> Association magazine, pointing out that Ezra Pound
> could
> have been talking about Adams when he wrote:
> 
>         “They will come no more, the old men with
> grand
> manners.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
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