“Some of my best photographs have been made in and on the rim of [that] canyon.”
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Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of ach…
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culture · American photographer and environmentalist (1902–1984) · photographer · pianist · writer · mountaineer · university teacher · environmentalist · documentary photographer · also Ansel Adams, Ansel Easton Adams, Ansel Easton Adams II, Ansel E. Adams, Adams
Born 20 February 1902 · Died 22 April 1984 · Q60809
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2026· 5 entries
Cultura Colectiva: Moonrise Hernandez de Ansel Adams: significado y lo que no se ve
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Boing Boing: Ansel Adams shot 226 park photos for a mural that never got made
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Yahoo: Who inspires our community’s photography? From Ansel Adams to family and friends
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Open Culture: 226 Ansel Adams Photographs of Great American National Parks Are Now Online
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2025· 1 entry
Yahoo: OKC exhibit 'Discovering Ansel Adams' focuses on the famed photographer's love of nature
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2023· 1 entry
Yahoo: Ansel Adams: Capturing the majesty of nature
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2018· 3 entries
Wall Street Journal: ‘Ansel Adams in Our Time’ Review: Reconsidering a Mountainous Career
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The Boston Globe: You probably remember Ansel Adams from dorm-room calendars. But there’s much more
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Boston Magazine: The Photography of Ansel Adams Is Coming to the MFA
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2007· 2 entries
Awarded California Hall of Fame (2007).
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Was inducted into the California Hall of Fame by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver
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1991· 2 entries
Dennis di Cicco of Sky & Telescope determined that Moonrise was made on November 1, 1941
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Recreated in part by UCLA-based photographer Kevin Cooley in 2014, and exhibited in part at UCR in 2025
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1984· 4 entries
In the intensive-care unit at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, at age 82
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Died 1984-04-22.
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“For me the future of the image is going to be in electronic form. … You will see perfectly beautiful images on an electronic screen. And I'd say that would be very handsome. They would be almost as close as the best reproductions.”
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Adams was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame
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1981· 1 entry
Awarded Hasselblad Award (1981).
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1980· 2 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Jimmy Carter (1980).
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President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for "his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both on film and on earth
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1979· 1 entry
President Jimmy Carter commissioned Adams to make the first official photographic portrait of a U
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1975· 1 entry
Cofounded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which handles some of his estate matters
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1974· 1 entry
Exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles (formerly known as the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles), an annual summer photography festival in France
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1972· 1 entry
Adams contributed images to help publicize Proposition 20, which authorized the state to regulate development along portions of the California coast
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1971· 1 entry
And the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation was established in 1980 by The Wilderness Society, which also has a large permanent gallery of his work on display at its Washington, D
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1969· 1 entry
Won Progress Medal (1969).
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1968· 1 entry
Was awarded the Conservation Service Award, the highest award of the Department of the Interior
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1967· 1 entry
And now resides in the Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside
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1963· 2 entries
Awarded John Muir Award (1963).
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And dedicated it to the memory of his Sierra Club friend Russell Varian, who was a co-inventor of the klystron and who had died in 1959
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1955· 1 entry
Edward Steichen selected Adams's Mount Williamson for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man, which was seen by nine million visitors
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1952· 1 entry
Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, which was intended as a serious journal of photography, displaying its best practitioners and newest innovations
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1950· 1 entry
Ansel had a dispute with the undertaker when choosing the casket in which to bury her
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1946· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1946).
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1945· 1 entry
Adams was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts
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1943· 1 entry
Adams had a camera platform mounted on his station wagon, to afford him a better vantage point over the immediate foreground and a better angle for expansive backgrounds
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1941· 2 entries
At the Art Center School of Los Angeles, now known as the Art Center College of Design
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Adams contracted with the National Park Service to make photographs of National Parks, Indian reservations, and other locations managed by the department, for use as mural-sized prints to decorate the department's new bu
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1940· 2 entries
The department opened its first exhibition, Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics, which resembled large survey exhibitions that Adams and Newhall had previously mounted independently
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Adams created A Pageant of Photography, the largest and most important photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors
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1938· 1 entry
As part of the Sierra Club's efforts to secure the designation of Kings Canyon as a national park
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1937· 1 entry
Adams, O'Keeffe, and friends organized a month-long camping trip in Arizona, with Orville Cox, the head wrangler at Ghost Ranch, as their guide
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1936· 1 entry
Virginia inherited the studio and continued to operate it until 1971
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1935· 1 entry
Adams created many new photographs of the Sierra Nevada; and one of his most famous, Clearing Winter Storm, depicted the entire Yosemite Valley, just as a winter storm abated, leaving a fresh coat of snow
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1934· 1 entry
Became a core principle in his photography
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1933· 1 entry
His first child Michael was born, followed by Anne two years later
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1932· 2 entries
Adams helped form the anti-pictorialist Group f/64, a loose and relatively short-lived association of like-minded "straight" or "pure" photographers on the West Coast whose members included Edward Weston and Imogen Cunni
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Adams had a group show at the M
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1928· 1 entry
After a pause from 1925 to 1926 during which he had brief relationships with various women
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1927· 1 entry
Adams began working with Albert M
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1921· 1 entry
And Best's Studio began selling his Yosemite prints the next year
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1915· 1 entry
His father insisted that he spend part of each day studying the exhibits as part of his education
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1907· 1 entry
His family moved 2 miles (3 km) west to a new home near the Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, just south of the Presidio Army Base
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1902· 1 entry
Born 1902-02-20.
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