Ansel Adams: The Man Who Captured the Earth's Beauty'

The iconic photographs of Ansel Adams, that oversized talent of a shutterbug, have never known anything but praise-something underscored in the flat-out neat little show "Ansel Adams: The Man Who Captured the Earth's Beauty," organized by the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, N.C., now occupying the Scriven Gallery at the Fenimore Art Museum.
There really are no words that adequately describe the astounding beauty of Adams' work like 1944's "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California," 1947's "Sand Bar, Rio Grande, Big Bend National Park, Texas," and 1944's "El Capitan Fall, Yosemite National Park, California."
But call them masterpieces, at least.

The exhibition's minimized curatorial commentary keeps the emphasis where it belongs-on the 25 gelatin silver prints made from vintage negatives.
A shaft of light cuts the center of a 1945 photograph of the partially cloud-obscured Mount Williamson, in the Sierra Nevada, as seen from Manzanar, California...the explosive punch of Old Faithful is almost felt as its geyser spews skyward in 1942's "Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming."
Yet as much as Adams might have liked to have had the viewer's attention fully on his eye-grabbing, often cloud-wrapped and winter storm-curtained subjects, his creations were wrought as much through the photographic art of apertures, exposure times and filters as they were through the sheer naked grandeur of his landscapes.
The exhibition reveals startling contrasts between geological features in photographs like 1948's "Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake, Denali National Park, Alaska," and the severe contrasts of light and shadows that dominate 1948's "Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley National Monument, California" that could only have been achieved through the medium of black and white photography.
Only once in this impressive show did an Adams' photograph-1939's "Merced River Cliffs, Autumn, Yosemite Valley, California"-seem to be an inadequate expression of its subject in black and white.
An ardent preservationist, Adams compiled a stunning photographic record of the wild state of America's national parks.
But he may have overreached.
Once seen, his works stir a longing for something more than a vicarious experience-as exceptional as that might be.
With the advent of the Interstate System-the Dwight D. Eidenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways-in 1956, and the coming on of the jet age, accessibility to national parks increased exponentially, with crowds flocking to the very areas Adams argued so persuasively through his photographs to protect.

"Ansel Adams: The Man Who Captured the Earth's Beauty." Through May 13 at the Fenimore Art Museum, 5798 State Highway 80, Lake Road, Cooperstown, N.Y. (888) 547-1450. http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org.

read WAYNE MYERS' full article at
http://www.capitalcentral.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18293750&BRD=1709&PAG=461&dept_id=68844&rfi=6

Photography lovers who liked this also liked:
collectors art
collectors canvas prints
collectors framed prints
collectors acrylic prints
collectors prints
collectors posters
collectors greeting cards
collectors photos

socialist art
socialist canvas prints
socialist framed prints
socialist acrylic prints
socialist prints
socialist posters
socialist greeting cards
socialist photos

simple art
simple canvas prints
simple framed prints
simple acrylic prints
simple prints
simple posters
simple greeting cards
simple photos