I long for the high places - they are so clean and pure and untouched.

"I long for the high places - they are so clean and pure and untouched."

Ansel Adams,
landscape photographer

Photo: I love how this Alpine Buckwheat plant is thriving in pumice soil. To me, it amplifies Ansel Adams' insight about the cleanness and purity of mountain vistas. Mt. Rainier National Park, WA, July 29, 2015

There are always two people in every picture . . .

 

"There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer."

Ansel Adams

Photo: Spring-Beauty flowers; Lory State Park, CO; March 20, 2014

Nature photography elicits a sense of hope for a better future.

"I am not afraid of beauty, of poetry, of sentiment. I think it is just as important to bring to people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a 'document' of ugliness, squalor, and despair. For every grim image of Harlem there should be some buoyant truthful image of a hopeful society and some image of the natural scene . . . Is there no way photography can be used to suggest a better life?"

Ansel Adams, responding to those who critiqued his work as having little social significance

Photo: Golden Columbines, Glacier National Park, MT; August 1, 2013

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A large granite mountain speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

"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."

Ansel Adams

Photo: Aspen trees and the Never Summer Range, near Gould, CO; October 7, 2013

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The world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

 

"I frankly profess a somewhat mystical concept of nature; I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.  Whatever mess we observe is our own responsibility! . . . There is a profound difference between recreation and re-creation, and the experience of nature relates to the latter."

Ansel Adams

Photo: White Violet in the mist, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012

Tenderness is a sort of elastic appropriation of the essence of things into the essence of yourself, and the giving of yourself to the resultant combination of essences.

 

"Tenderness - a sort of elastic appropriation of the essence of things into the essence of yourself, without asking too many intellectual questions, and the giving of yourself to the resultant combination of essences.  The soup stirs the cook - perhaps that's what happens in Art."

Ansel Adams, in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz

Photo: A Pasqueflower on a misty day, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012

There is a real social significance in a photograph of a rock.

 

"Because your greatest work is of nature and deals with the eternal, you are accused of being 'Inhuman,' 'not interested in humanity,' 'oblivious to the GREAT issues of Today.'  They don't realize that what takes their breath away when they look at your work is your profound expression of HUMAN emotion.  That you touch the innermost spirit as few artists in any medium ever have."

Nancy Newhall, to Ansel Adams

"I still believe there is a real social significance in a rock - just as there is in a line of unemployed.  For that opinion I am charged with inhumanity, unawareness."

Ansel Adams, to Edward Weston

"I agree with you that there is just as much 'social significance in a rock' as in 'a line of unemployed.'  All depends on the seeing . . . If I have in some way awakened others to a broader conception of life - added significance and beauty to their lives - . . . then I have functioned, and am satisfied."

Edward Weston, to Ansel Adams

Photo: Wild plum blossoms against a backdrop of red rock, Lory State Park, CO, April 5, 2012

The complexities of the modern world are extremely foolish in the face of the eternal openness and beauty of these mountains.

"I hope you had a most delightful trip in the High Country, and that you were benefited in mind and soul and body by the divine influence of the mountains.  I think nothing can be compared to the Hills for the elevation of spirit, and peace of mind, which they produce in man when he lives intelligently among them . . . I look on the lines and forms of the mountains and all other aspects of Nature as if they were but the vast expression of ideas within the Cosmic Mind, if such it can be called . . . The complexities of the modern world . . . are extremely foolish in the face of the eternal openness and beauty of these mountains."

Ansel Adams, in a letter to  Virginia Best, 1925

Photo: Wild Plum bushes blossoming with the foothills in the background, Lory State Park, CO April 12, 2012

America is a land of joy - more than any other land.

 

"I am getting very tired of . . . being called 'dead' because I do not include 'social' material and subjects of 'class-significance' [in my work] . . . It is childish to continue to dwell on the negative aspects of society, at least to concentrate on them . . . I am not afraid of beauty, of poetry, of sentiment.  I think it is just as important to bring to people evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a 'document' of ugliness, squalor, and despair . . . For every grim image of Harlem, there should be some buoyant truthful image of a hopeful society and some image of the natural scene . . . Is there no way photography can be used to suggest a better life - not just to stress the unfortunate aspects of existence? . . . There must be . . . America is a land of joy - more than any other land.  With all the misery, all the economic troubles, and the crack-pot politicians, we are still . . . the most beautiful country in the world . . . I am a congenital optimist; I feel we are coming out of this mess earlier than most people think; and that the world will be a better place for it."

Ansel Adams

Photo: Pasqueflowers with Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker in the background, Lory State Park, CO, April 10, 2012