Ansel Adams: Capturing the Majesty of Nature

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CBS News Correspondent Conor Knighton visits an exhibition on the artist's work, "Ansel Adams: In Our Time," currently on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Ansel Adams, Cedric Wright and Friends

Ansel Adams & The Story of the Sierra Club Outings

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From his first official experiences with the Sierra Club in 1927 through his final year as a board member in 1971, Ansel Adams cherished these outings. It was on these trips that he developed lifetime friendships over days of hiking, and nights of entertainment.

Ansel Adams, Photographer

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By William Turnage, Reprinted courtesy of the author and Oxford University Press
Ansel Adams, photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of 1907, and Adams’s father spent the rest of his life doggedly but fruitlessly attempting to recoup. An only child, Adams was born when his mother was nearly forty. His relatively elderly parents, affluent family history, and the live-in presence of his mother’s maiden sister and aged father all combined to create an environment that was decidedly Victorian and both socially and emotionally conservative. Adams’s mother spent much of her time brooding and fretting over her husband’s inability to restore the Adams fortune, leaving an ambivalent imprint on her son. Charles Adams, on the other hand, deeply and patiently influenced, encouraged, and supported his son.

(Ansel Adams) Remarks Before the Platform Committee on the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, August 24, 1968

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My name is Ansel Adams–photographer, writer and conservationist–of Carmel, California. l am a Director of the Sierra Club and a member of many conservation organizations, but the opinions I express are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization with which I am associated.

Canyon de Chelly from White House Overlook, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, 1942

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On first traveling to Canyon de Chelly in 1937, only six years after its establishment as a national monument, Ansel Adams thought it to be the most beautiful place on earth. Astonished by the “beautiful, flowing patterns” of the sand dunes, he wrote to his wife, Virginia Best:

Ansel Adams Defined the Modern Environmental Movement

Today the environment continues to be attacked and the clock is being turned back on progress on many fronts. Ansel Adams spent decades in the battle to protect our environment.

Ansel Adams, Photographer

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Adams, Ansel (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate.