Ansel Anecdotes

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The story of the making of the photograph Moonrise, Hernandez , New Mexico is legendary. Ansel's description in Examples: The Making of Forty Photographs is oft repeated, and quite dramatic. We have brought together several vignettes that put a little more perspective on what let up to the dramatic moment on a lonely highway at 4:05 PM (local time), October 31, 1941.
Ansel at LeConte Lodge, Yosemite Valley, California, c. 1921. Collection of Michael and Jeanne Adams.

Upcoming Event in Yosemite National Park: Rebecca Senf Discusses Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams first arrived in California’s Yosemite Valley as a shy, home-schooled fourteen-year-old boy in 1916. How did this young tourist, with a Box Brownie camera in hand, become an accomplished mountaineer and one of the most recognizable photographers of the twentieth century?

Mt. McKinley Bears Invade Ranger Cabin

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Ansel and his son Michael arrived at Mt. McKinley National Park on the infamous "Moose Gooser", the Alaska Railroad that ran from Fairbanks...
Mount McKinley at Wonder Lake by Ansel AdamsMount McKinley at Wonder Lake, 1948, by Ansel Adams

Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake

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Ansel Adams’ “Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake” is one of the defining images of the Alaskan Wilderness. Ansel made this image when he, accompanied by his son Michael, set out in 1947 on a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the majestic landscapes of Alaska

Upcoming Event in Yosemite National Park: Rebecca Senf Discusses Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams

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Please join us on April 17, 2020 for a Yosemite evening celebrating Rebecca Senf’s new book, “Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams.

Making of Yosemite Valley, Winter

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While most visitors to Yosemite National Park come in the summer months, winter is a magical time of year in Yosemite Valley. The majesty and solitude of its snow-capped cliffs and frozen lakes fascinated Ansel Adams, who returned again and again over the decades to make hundreds of photographs of the rugged landscape in winter.

Virginia Best Adams: The Woman Behind The Legend

Virginia Best and Ansel Adams met in Yosemite in 1921. It was during one of Ansel’s first summers in the park, and as an enthusiastic young musician at the time, his time in the mountains posed a dilemma: where to practice his music?

Japanese-American Internment: Ansel Adams Exhibit Delayed 75 Years

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In 1943 and 1944, Ansel Adams documented one of the darkest chapters in American history, the incarceration of Japanese-American citizens during WWII. The resulting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, titled "Born Free and Equal," was met with considerable controversy, causing the closing of the exhibit and the destruction of the related books in 1945.