In some ways Ansel Adams confirmed that my husband
and I were a match made in heaven. No, I did not know the famous photographer
personally. No, he did not arrange my first date with my husband through a Sierra
Club app. However, his photography played a role in sealing our fate.
You see the first time I ventured to my future
husband Vincent’s condo in Brighton for a homemade dinner I noticed a few
things. First, we owned the same rice cooker. This was amazing in itself
because I had acquired mine from a family friend who had taught at the
university with my father. The professor was heading back to his home in Hong
Kong, so he kindly dropped off the rice cooker for us to use. Believe me when I
say at that time I don’t think there was anyone else in my hometown of
Farmington, Connecticut who owned a rice cooker, never mind this particular
model. To find out Vincent owned the exact same one was nothing short of
miraculous.
But I digress. The other thing I noticed was Vincent’s
décor. His place was completely modern compared to the antique New England look
that was familiar to me. It was like seeing an IKEA showroom before I knew
about IKEA. And there, on his living room wall above his keyboard, stood two framed
Ansel Adams prints: Moon and Half Dome and
Old Faithful Geyser. While I owned a
coffee table-sized book entitled Ansel Adams
In Color
edited by Harry M. Callahan, the full-sized prints on his wall had a completely
different effect. I was transported to another time and place.
In this way Ansel Adams brought us together. I
looked at Vincent with new appreciation and through the lens of this great
photographer. After all my future husband was not like anyone I had dated before.
As a Chinese-American who grew up in San Francisco, he was surrounded by a
world much like the one Adams experienced. These beautiful portraits of nature
were in his back yard, so to speak, and they were directly opposite from the
tight, curving New England roads that I knew and loved.
Still, I could feel the West calling to me, as so
many others have when they fall into the world of Ansel Adams. I wanted to see
these wild and lonely places. This is truly the beauty of his work. As Robert
Frost’s words call to a place deep in our souls, so do Ansel Adams’ lanscapes.
When we observe them, we long for the quiet, the simple, and the majestic.
As Robert Turnage wrote in a piece for the Ansel
Adams Gallery, “Wilderness has
always been for Adams ‘a mystique: a valid, intangible, non-materialistic
experience.’ Through his photographs he has touched countless people with a
sense of that mystique and a realization of the importance of preserving the
last remaining wilderness lands.”
Like many famous people, Adams did not have an easy
start to life. As the children’s book, Antsy Ansel: Ansel Adams, a Life in
Nature by Cindy Jenson-Elliott (Illustrated by Christy
Hale) reveals, Adams was an antsy child. He couldn’t sit still in school long
enough to learn, and so his parents allowed him to be homeschooled and learn outside
from nature. “’Why don’t you go outside?’” suggested his father. So Ansel did,
whenever he could.” The day that his parents gave him a camera changed his life
and our world, too. There was no looking back.
Not surprisingly
when I noticed that the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) was having a special exhibit
entitled Ansel Adams in Our Time I
had to go. The exhibit is in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery from now until
February 24th. Some of Adams’ most famous photographs are displayed,
including Moonrise Over Hernandez, New
Mexico; Clearing Winter Storm,
Yosemite National Park; and the one I discovered in my husband’s wall so
many years ago, Moon over Half Dome. The
exhibit also includes work by Adam’s predecessors, such as Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and Timothy O'Sullivan. Likewise, there is work by those who have followed
in Adams’ footsteps and who have made statements of their own. These pieces are
displayed side by side with the Master’s. This way the visitor can discover the
work of photographers who might be new to them and, like Adams predicted, see
the impact of the human race on our natural environment.
In particular I
loved connecting with Laura McPhee Midsummer and her photograph entitled Lupine and Fireweed. As the plaque
states: “Working with a large-format camera, Laura McPhee records the impact of
human activity on the land—especially in Idaho, a state she loves and visits
regularly.” And then there was Will Wilson. As a Native American photographer,
he offered a unique perspective on the same land that moved Adams.
Whether you are
introduced to new work or whether you reminisce about photography that you’ve
loved for years, please go visit. It brought me back to the first time I saw
Ansel Adams’ work hanging on my husband’s wall. Now they hang on OUR wall.
Besides owning the same rice cooker, which seemed like a sign that we were
meant to be, we had Ansel who worked his way into our lives and sealed our
fate. Not a bad introduction. I guess I owe him a big thank you.
Other items you may
want to check out, related to Ansel Adams and his cohorts:
Ansel
Adams: A Documentary. Written and directed by Ric Burns
Ansel
Adams: The Early Years by Karen E. Quinn and Theodore E.
Stebbins, Jr MFA
Ansel
Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places by Eric Peter Nash
The
American Wilderness: Ansel Adams edited by Andrea G. Stillman
The
Camera by Ansel Adams
Ansel
Adams: Letters and Images (1916-1984) edited by Mary Street
Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman
