Ansel Adams
34 quotes
Biography
"Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art."
"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
"There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit."
"Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter."
"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration."
"Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."
"The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream."
"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."
"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them."
"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save the environment."
"If what I see in my mind excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph."
"I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” That usually doesn’t go over at all."
"Yes, in the sense that the negative is like the composer’s score. Then, using that musical analogy, the print is the performance. (Paraphrased as "Film is the score and the print is the performance.")"
"No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied — it speaks in silence to the very core of your being."
"The only things in my life that compatibly exist with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit."
"At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both in film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans."
"His attacks on Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, have received so much attention that Watt was asked about the 'thunderous denunciations of his policies by Ansel Adams.' Watt replied with a shrug, 'Ansel Adams never took a picture with a human being in it in his life.' Adams’ friend photographer James Alinder responded, 'James Watt is no better historian of photography than Secretary of the Interior. Ansel Adams has not only made pictures of people, but his portraits form a major part of his photographic production.' In fact, the Carter Administration broke with tradition by having the Presidential portrait done not by a painter but by a photographer—Adams. Although the break with tradition was highly criticized, the Polaroid photo now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington."
"While the photos at the D.M.V. (New York) will still be taken in color, the engraving is done in grayscale, hence the Ansel Adams feel."
"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."
"Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships."
"A good photograph is knowing where to stand."
"A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed."
"No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit."
"Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space."
"To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things."