Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/13

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Subject: [Leica] Ansel Adams' West
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 10:15:35 -0500

At 07:30 AM 6/13/98 -0700, you wrote:

>i suggest that Ansel Adams managed the same (and others, etc etc). millions
>of people a year visit Yosemite, trampling all over that beautiful landscape.
>yet few, if any, manage to transform that landscape into a truly great
>image with the skill and anticipation of the result that Adams achieved.

People who don't have an in-depth understanding of the West (U.S.), and the
rugged beauty, and the amazing complexity, vast landscapes and the
wonderful sense of  the primordial when tromping through the woods with
nary another human for miles around, who have the hardest time with Ansel
Adam's work I suspect. Not everyone mind you.

I grew up in the mountains of Oregon. Fishing along pure streams I could
drink straight out of (long time ago!), and sleeping under a lean-to of fir
boughs with a fire crackling outside and light snow falling. And never with
a camera in those days. I was there for "it," not for making pictures. Too,
bad, but I guess it's paid off in some ways. 

That's the rugged outdoors that caused me to instantly understand Ansel
Adams' work. Nobody can tell me that his work has no meaning, because I
know from my own life what many of his pictures are about. Some I don't
understand either. That's the way with photography. But Ansel knew the West
as intimately as just about anyone who ever lived out there. I almost said
here, but for now I'm stuck in the midwest U.S. with my refuge of AA books
and my other photo - getaway - books.

We can't blame people for not responding to his work if it's so alien to
them they have no frame of reference to give them the same meanings we find
in our hearts and memories. Photography is so personal a thing I can't
imagine anyone being universally liked. Is there such a photographer?
Certainly not Cartier-Bresson. 

Most universally disliked? (Joel Peter-Witkin?)
- --

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even
if a stubborn one. - Albert Einstein