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Ansel Adams in ColorExplore more photos from the story |
Ansel Adams never made up his mind about color photography. Long before his death in 1984 at age 82, he foresaw that this "beguiling medium" might one day replace his cherished black and white. In notes tentatively dated to 1949, he observed that "color photography is rapidly becoming of major importance."
Yet he once likened working in color to playing an out-of-tune piano. America's regnant Western landscape photographer tried to control every step of picture-making, but for much of his lifetime too many stages of the color process were out of his hands. Kodachrome—the first mass-market color film, introduced in 1935—was so complicated that even Adams, a darkroom wizard, had to rely on labs to develop it. Color printing was a crapshoot in the 1940s and '50s. Reproductions in magazines and books could be garish or out of register. Before the 1960s, black-and-white film often actually yielded subtler, less exaggerated pictures of reality.
Still, Adams' misgivings did not prevent him from taking hundreds of color transparencies. As he traveled the country on commercial assignments or on Guggenheim Fellowships—a project to celebrate the national parks—he often took pictures in color as well as black and white. A generous selection of these Kodachromes, most created between 1946 and 1948, appears in a new book, Ansel Adams in Color, revised and expanded from the 1993 edition, with laser scans that might have met even his finicky standards.
American motorists of a certain age may have seen some of the images without knowing they were his. The Standard Oil Company (or Esso, a precursor of Exxon) purchased reproduction rights to a number of them to promote driving in America. If you filled up your tank at a Standard Oil gas station in 1947 or 1948, you might have been given an Adams picture—Crater Lake, say, or White Sands—as part of a series the company called "See Your West."
Anyone who walked through Grand Central Terminal in New York City around that time may recall seeing Adams' color work in a more imposing form. His photographs were among those that sparkled in the station's Kodak Coloramas, gigantic transparencies 18 feet high and 60 feet wide that loomed above the commuting throngs in the main concourse. Adams judged these (correctly) to be "aesthetically inconsequential but technically remarkable."
He shot in color because advertisers and corporations liked to present themselves in color, and he liked the money they offered him; by 1935, he had a wife and two children to support. Work in this mode also may have allowed him to keep a sharp psychological distinction between those lucrative jobs and his more personal black-and-white oeuvre, for which he alone was to blame in case of failure.
But almost any technical photographic challenge interested him. He served as a longtime consultant for both Eastman Kodak and Polaroid, and the quest for true and reliable color obsessed both companies for decades. Adams wrote numerous articles for popular magazines on problems with the medium, often touching on philosophical issues. "There is an inevitable conflict between the photometric accuracy of the real color film and the subjective emotional effects of colors in relation to each other," he wrote in a 1949 draft of one article.
The slow speed of early Kodachrome did not allow much beyond portraits, still lifes and landscapes. Stopping action was generally out of the question. To combat the static quality that hobbled photographers who used color during this period, Adams came up with a solution that would become standard: the multimedia slide show. For the journal Photo Notes, he wrote—in 1950!—"possibly one of the most important aspects of the medium would be revealed in the production of 35 mm or 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 slides which would be used in carefully planned projected sequences, using sound track for comment or music."
Comments
Although this picture is beautiful, I prefer Adams' black and white photos. There's such beauty in the starkness of them.
Posted by BetteLee Henry on October 21,2009 | 07:33AM
I have always adored Ansel Adams B&W photographs, having cut my teeth on them at art school in the 1980s. I understand his reluctance to use colour when the outcome was not completely controllable by him. Colour is an added element of design that needs such careful consideration in a composition. His colour photos shown here are quite beautiful, but aren't quite the quintessential Adams we know and love.
Posted by Suzanne Dewhurst on October 26,2009 | 07:04PM
Interesting to read this article after being friends with a photographer who, I believe, knew Adams, and who also spent years in his own color lab trying to establish, measure, and lock down the variables associated with Kodachrome development, looking at time, temperature, chemistry, etc., and attempting to make a viable, repeatable computer program that would yield a repeatable, predictable, consistent Kodachrome development process and result. It was a huge effort, but I understood that it never was sufficiently successful, and that, ultimately, there developed questions about the longevity of the truth of the color in Kodachrome images over time.
Posted by Robert Nuner on October 31,2009 | 03:49PM
As a new admirer of his work it is pleasurable to see articles and books still written by him. I think he was a genius and a very insightful photographer who viewed photography from a philosophical point of view.
Posted by Renise on November 2,2009 | 04:48PM
As a genius in the field of photography, Adams understood that the mechanical process of capturing color is very different from the interpretation that the human eye/brain connection makes. Were he alive today in the growing digital age, he would still be struggling with the difference. We can appreciate his mastery of light by converting some of our color photographs to black and white and see how lifeless many of them are, especially without digital manipulation. Every photographer should take the time to try this experiment to truly appreciate Ansel Adams.
Adams, the late Galen Rowell (unique vision and energy) and DeWitt Jones (inside the mind and soul of the photographer) are my guiding lights in shaping my photographic experience.
Posted by John G Schickler on November 6,2009 | 01:44PM
in comparing Adams's color work to his b/w it is easy to understand why he was so discouraged with the color medium. The photo"s shown here are not indicative of his skill and perception. in his b/w images you see full shadow detail , brilliant high lights with detail . in these color samples. the shadows are blocked , the highlights are washed out. the problem was that the color film in the past were very contrasty and the ability to get full range images was imposable with these materials, especially kodachrome. Kodachrome is notorious for it's blocked shadows . look at any national geographic magazine of that time and you will see this blocked shadows characteristic . the problem with nature photography is that you cannot control the light you have to work with. In b/w Adams could gain great control over the image because the b/w negative film was, and still is "adjustable" , to match the light"s contrast by adjusting the developing process in the dark room. In the color process ,both negative and positive {transparencies] involve three separate films , red, green, and blue, sandwiched together and processed all at the same time. any change in the process would have a different effect on each layer resulting in wild color distortions. there is the dye transfer process that uses three separate b/w negatives shot through red, green, and blue filters and then these can be processed in the same way as regular b/w then the negatives are registered in too one image. See the work of -Eliot Porter- Adams found the dye transfer to time consuming and the fact that if any thing moved during the three exposures the movement would be noticeable with a rainbow effect from the three different colors shot separately. who knows what Ansel Adams could of done with the advent of photoshop and the high dynamic range photography that we have to day.
Posted by dale on November 7,2009 | 10:35AM
I met Mr. Adams at his home and workshop in the Carmel Highlands in about 1969, maybe '70. I was a student of one of his students (Al Weber).
I recall he showed us a color print, but he was modest about it and suggested it was the inevitable future of photography but he was clearly more in command of the subject when he talked about his work in black and white.
Around that time Wynn Bullock, one of Adams and Edward Weston's peers took to moving pieces of colored glass he picked up on the shore around on a lightboard, and he would photograph in color the "light paintings" as he called them.
When I saw him do it he was still experimenting with the process, and the results were not on a level with his mystical compositions in black and white.
Posted by Bob Divale on November 7,2009 | 02:57PM
Prior to reading this article I had never read Smithsonian Magazine nor had I heard of Ansel Adams. This article was very informative about Mr. Adams as well being extremely well written, I now have an interest in both.
I really appreciate how thorough and informative the articles published in this magazine are, truly a great piece of literature.
Mr. Adams on the other hand is simply an amazing photographer. Both his B & W work and color portraits are truly inspiring.
Posted by Caleb on November 11,2009 | 07:13PM
I had never seen any of Adams's color photographs until now, and I can only say I'm truly amazed at how well he had mastered all forms of film photography. He was truly one of those photographers who "just got it."
This article certainly has inspired me to look into more of his work. I had seen some of his B&W Landscapes, but never much of his urban art. His work never ceases to amaze me.
Posted by Stephen on November 12,2009 | 08:48AM
Before reading this article, I never realized how difficult color had been to capture. I take for granted the fact that color today is easy to obtain and everywhere! I love the fact the Adams strived to change the way things were and I am eager to read his new book.
Posted by Ashley on November 12,2009 | 07:50PM
Growing up my father had a b/w Ansel Adams in his office. Every time I looked at that photo, I saw a new picture. There was always a detail, shadow, and overall presence that made me never grow tired of admiring his work.
Posted by Sarah Leyda on November 13,2009 | 06:38AM