Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams........posters

As a young man, Ansel Adams was seized by his passions for art and nature that would lead him to become one of the greatest photographers of the Twentieth Century as well as one of the world's most influential conservationists. Born in San Francisco and trained initially as a concert pianist, he published the first of his many books, Taos Pueblo, in 1930.

In his early years the American West and Southwest were his primary areas of interest and exploration, but later his fascination for the wilderness -- or, as he once called it, "the grandeur and potentials of the one and only world in which we inhabit" -- would take him from the rocky coast of Maine to the remotest peaks of Alaska.

His commitment to his art also led him to write the classic Basic Photo Books series; to help set up the first photographic art department of a museum at the Museum of Modern Art, and to found the first college of photography, at the California School of Fine Art.

Shortly after his death, a mountain in his beloved Yosemite was named for him and the Ansel Adams Wilderness established, a fitting tribute this consummate chronicler and champion of the wild.

(c)1995 Graphique de France