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Steichen and other “fuzzie-wuzzies,” as Adams referred to them. In 1933 Ansel wrote what amounts to a fan letter to Strand, saying that he was psychologically and phys- ically moved by his images and that “I believe you have made the one perfect and complete definition of photography.” Adams would be struck by the clar- ity of Strand’s prints at a later meeting in New York. Strand used toners to make the whites glisten against marvelously deep blacks, a practice Ansel would adopt to bring out the luminous passages in his prints. There were special properties of light in the regions in which both men worked. The New Mexico desert and the High Sierras are lands of great extremes and stark contrasts. John Muir, with a true photographer’s eye for the emotional quality of light, described a magical scene on the forest floor in First Summer in Yosemite : “. . . low soft and lovely the light streaming through this living ceiling, revealing the arching branching ribs and veins of the fronds as the framework of countless panes of pale green and yellow plant-glass nicely fitted together—a fairyland created out of common fernstuff.” Group f/64 Adams brought his evangelical zeal for a new, modernist-influenced school of photography to a meeting in 1932 of like-minded souls at the Berkeley, California, home of the photographer Willard Van Dyke. Also in attendance were Edward Weston, ImogenCunningham, Henry Swift, SoniaNoskowiak, and John Paul Edwards. Ansel spoke animatedly about the need to move away from pictorialism toward a new form of “pure” or “straight” photogra- phy. On another night, they looked for a name for their nascent group and came up with Group f/64, named after the smallest aperture stop on a camera lens. The name is significant. Members of the group were fond of shooting at f/64, which gives the greatest depth of field and over- all clarity of focus to a picture. Ansel would use this amazing “God’s eye” overall focus to grandly operat- ic effect in later works, such as the well-known

The Modern World Adams’s meeting with the photographer Paul Strand in New Mexico in the summer of 1930 was a critical juncture in the development of his think- ing and work. Strand offered to show Ansel some of his negatives, using a sheet of white paper and the bright New Mexico sunlight for a light box. Ansel recalls the moment as transformative: “They were glorious negatives: full, luminous shadows and strong high values in which subtle passages of tone were preserved. The compositions were extraordi- nary: perfect, uncluttered edges and beautifully dis- tributed shapes that he had carefully selected and interpreted as forms—simple, yet of great power.” Adams returned to San Francisco with a determi- nation to make photography, rather than music, his career. Paul Strand had provided the vital link— between a modernist technique and the natural sub- ject matter—that allowed Ansel’s thinking to fall into place. Modernism in photography is often associat- ed with modernist content, such as Charles Sheeler’s gleaming steel machinery, skyscrapers, and locomotives—motion and progress of all kinds. But in the 1920s Strand turned away from the culture of the machine and applied his clean-edged, sharply defined technique to photos of New England and New Mexico. This combination is what Adams perceived in the negatives Strand had showed him. Ansel’s own bud- ding modernist sensibilities can be seen in his admi- ration for such qualities as “perfect, uncluttered edges” and the great power of simple forms. It was a further step in his rejection of the misty romanticism of pictorialist photographers such as Edward

Fin Dome Dark and light planes are dramatically juxtaposed on the two faces of the dome, set against a deep gray sky. The vast sky emphasizes the vertical angularity and isolation of the rock. The dramatic tone of Adams’s photos was influential in impelling Congress to declare Kings River Canyon a National Park in 1940.

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