keith pitts photography blog

ansel adams - phoenix art museum

Steele Gallery
January 31, 2010 – June 6, 2010

Ansel Adams will offer new insights into the photographer’s greatest works, by bringing the vast holdings of the Center for Creative Photography’s Ansel Adams Archive to light. The exhibition – featuring 120 photographs and dozens of archival documents including video footage, original correspondence, photographic equipment, proof prints, alternate views, negatives, and portraits of the photographer – allows for a richer understanding of Adams’s beloved photographs.

The exhibition is organized around six aspects of Adams’s career.

A Time: Early Work
His early work includes intimate-scaled Pictorialist prints made very early in Adams’s photographic practice, including works from his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras (1927). A key piece in the Center’s Adams archive is his very first photo album (1916) made following his first visit to Yosemite, on family vacation. This album will be presented in a digitized version that allows visitors to see it in its entirety. A range of Monolith: The Face of Half Dome (1927) prints, on a variety of papers, will demonstrate how the choice of materials impact the appearance of an iconic image.

A Place: American Southwest
His work in the American Southwest, visitors will see photographs made throughout Adams’s long career, including pictures of New Mexican Indians from the late 1920s, Canyon de Chelly, 1941, San Xavier del Bac, 1951, Aspens, New Mexico, 1958, and a number of views of the Grand Canyon. Adams’s masterpiece Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941 will be presented along with the negative, Adams’s printing notes, his dodging tools, and an alternate print that demonstrates the dramatic range of interpretations the photographer applied to this famous work. Visitors will also be able to see an original Timothy O’Sullivan photograph of the Canyon de Chelly’s White House Ruins that inspired Adams to rephotograph the site in 1941.

The exhibition is organized by the Center for Creative Photography and Phoenix Art Museum.

Support provided by American Express, BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona, UMB Bank Arizona, John C. Lincoln Health Network, J.W. Kieckhefer Foundation, Margaret T. Morris Foundation, Robert and Joan Cremin, Robin and Ric Donnelley, Joanie and Rick Fox, and the Museum’s Connoisseurs Circle, In Focus, and Men’s Arts Council.

Promotional support provided by CBS Outdoor, Phoenix New Times, Clear Channel Radio, Barnes and Noble, Latino Perspectives, and 944 Magazine.

Image Credit:
Ansel Adams. Thunderstorm, Mission San Xavier del Bac, ca. 1948. Ansel Adams Archive. 84.90.193. © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.