Lockheed Newsstand, Los Angeles, c. 1941 ~ Ansel Adams
Novelist, poet, or essayist: anyone who attempts to write consistently knows the experience. After days or weeks of steadily increasing frustration, a dam breaks. Encouraged by the warmth of reflection, frozen thought begins to flow, phrases splashing and tumbling toward unexpected conclusions.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass,” says Chekhov, and occasionally we do. We may be unable to explain how or why it happens — some lines do seem to write themselves — but no matter how strange or inexplicable the experience, there’s no question that it’s real.
Certainly there’s a thrill in finding a word, a line, or a phrase that resonates, and there’s magic when seemingly unrelated images converge. Those experiences are akin to finding diamonds enbedded into a dull and featureless landscape. Neither mined nor created, they simply are: lying about, waiting to be noticed and picked up. Without any need to be washed off or faceted, they simply shine.
Of course not all lines are diamonds, and more than a few phrases are only rhinestones, or tumbled granite. We may glimpse a flicker of brilliance, a glint of Chekov’s light, but most of us spend our time sifting through sandy drafts, hoping the right combination of luck and persistance will bring us another gem.
When it comes to artists recognized as masters of their craft, we’re often tempted to see only the diamonds in their work. I’ve never visited Yosemite, but if anyone mentions Half Dome or El Capitan, I see those places in my mind as clearly as if I were standing before them, and I see them because of Ansel Adams. His photographs, iconic images of those places, distill their essence and re-present them to us as unspeakable gifts.
El Capitan in Winter
Moon and Half Dome
Even when I’ve traveled in places that Adams chose to record with his camera — the Sonoma Hills, the Golden Gate headlands, Glacier Bay — his photographs often leave me regretting I saw so little of the world I explored. As one of my favorite writers, Gerard Van der Leun put it before his untimely death, “I find I don’t wish to explore new lands, but to explore again those I have already passed through, trying to see what I missed in the first hectic rush.”
Leaves, Glacier Bay
It was Gerard who introduced me to Adams’s work beyond Half Dome and snowscapes. In his fine, wide-ranging publication American Digest, I noticed the photographer’s name in the archives and decided to have a look. When I did, Gerard’s words could have been my own:
I don’t normally associate Ansel Adams with ironic snapshots of parking lots or small format urban photography at all. Like you, a photograph by Adams means the classic evocation of the great American wilderness. It never crossed my mind that he had photographed any of the cities of men, much less Los Angeles. But there it was. Maybe, I thought, there were more.
Indeed, there were. On assignment to Fortune Magazine, Adams set out to provide images for a March, 1941 story on air power rather dramatically titled “City of the Angels: The U.S. Breeds Its Air Power in the Fabulous Empire of Oomph.” The story of how photographs and negatives from that assignment found their way to the Los Angeles Public Library is fascinating; the historical notes included in the collection tell the tale:
Around 1939 Ansel Adams was commissioned by Fortune magazine to photograph a series of images for an article covering the aviation history of the Los Angeles area. For the project, Adams took 217 photographs showing everyday life, businesses, street scenes, aerospace employees, and a variety of other subjects, but when the article, “City of Angels,” appeared in the March 1941 issue, only a few of the images were included.
In the early 1960s, approximately 20 years later, Adams rediscovered all of the photographs among papers at his home in Carmel, and sent a letter of inquiry to the Los Angeles Public Library, asking if the institution would be interested in receiving the collection as a donation. In his letter, Adams expressed that, “the weather was bad over a rather long period and none of the pictures were very good” and “if they have no value whatsoever, please dispose of them in the incenerator [sic].”
He went on to write that “I would imagine that they represent about $100.00 minimum value.” In response, the Los Angeles Public Library gladly accepted the gift of 135 contact prints and 217 negatives, and the staff concluded that a fair value for the collection would be $150.00.
What’s striking about the Los Angeles photos is their quite ordinary nature. Billboards, hot dog stands, newshawkers, bowling tournaments, women hanging laundry: Adams photographed a city that could as easily have been Indianapolis or Wichita.
Beyond that, the photos weren’t particularly compelling; some were utterly pedestrian. Nonetheless, because of Adams’s work, Ralph’s grocery in Westwood remains part of the historical record, as does the slightly ironic, knowing gaze of the news guy at the corner.
Ralph’s Grocery Company, Westwood Village, Los Angeles ~ Ansel Adams
Given the totality of Adams’s work, the Los Angeles portfolio suggests certain realities. No one comes to artistic maturity in a day. However significant an individual’s achievements, the necessities of life and the compulsions of art live in continual tension. Most remarkably, under the right circumstances, even photographs taken by Ansel Adams could be mistaken for our own collection of old family snapshots, piled in shoeboxes in the back of a bedroom closet, waiting to be sorted.
Bowling, Doubled ~ Ansel Adams
Of all the treasures contained in Adams’s Los Angeles photos, my personal favorite appears to be a double exposure that’s part of a bowling alley series. As an amateur photographer, too much gazing at Moon and Half Dome or El Capitan in Winter can freeze me in my tracks. On the other hand, this little gem is comforting, almost encouraging. “Look,” it seems to say. “Even the best fall prey to bad judgement, poor vision, wrong decisions or errors born of inattention. Do you consider yourself better than the masters? Who are you to refuse the risk of creation?” The questions are worth considering, not only for photographers, but for anyone tempted toward creativity, yet fearful of public failure.
Looking at the photograph, I confess to curiosity. Why is it still available? Why didn’t it disappear from the catalogs, the archives? Did Adams overlook the double exposure when he made his donation? Was its inclusion with the portfolio purely accidental? Might he have seen the image as a photographic analogy to the imperfections of nature — the knot in the wood, so to speak — and just thrown it in with a grin? There’s no way to know.
Even without a definitive explanation, there’s no doubt that Adams’s flawed image exists as a gift for photographers of every era. Seen in isolation, it could be a snapshot taken by any casual observer. Seen in the context of Adams’s oeuvre, it serves as a reminder of several truths: that even the greatest photographer picked up a camera for a first time; that even when art permeates the soul, techniques must be learned; and that, above all, even the greatest among us occasionally get it wrong.
Even for Ansel Adams, there were poorly exposed, ineptly developed, out-of-focus, and badly framed images. In the end, it makes no difference. It’s the genius that endures.
Aspens ~ Northern New Mexico
From time to time, I’ve wondered what it would have been like to accompany Adams on one of his photo shoots. It would have been fascinating to watch him work: less for the sake of the final images than for the opportunity to witness his decision-making process. Given the chance, I might have chosen to travel with him to El Capitan, to one of the aspen groves he rendered so beautifully, or perhaps to Glacier Bay, which I’ve photographed myself.
On the other hand, as much as I admire his representations of nature, I’ve come to appreciate his Los Angeles work in a way I never would have imagined. The unexpected and amusing image from the bowling alley serves as a reminder from a consummate artist that it’s worth daring the double exposure on behalf of the perfect shot, and certainly worth accepting interminable, ordinary days as the price of one extraordinary hour. Half Dome is dramatic, to be sure, but there’s nothing wrong with hanging out at the bowling alley now and then.
Burbank bowling tournament ~ Ansel Adams
The Task at Hand 
