Ansel Adams (American Photographer, 1902-1984)

Adams described himself as a photographer — lecturer — writer. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that he was simply — indeed, compulsively — a communicator. He endlessly traveled the country in pursuit of both the natural beauty he revered and photographed and the audiences he required. Adams felt an intense commitment to promoting photography as a fine art and played a key role in the establishment of the first museum department of photography, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work at the museum fostered the closest relationships of Adams's life, with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, a historian and museum administrator and a writer-designer, respectively.

As Beaumont Newhall writes in his FOCUS: Memoirs of a Life in Photography (1993), "Ansel was a great party man and loved to entertain. He had a very dominating personality, and would always be the center of attention"

Wah... Ansel Adams has quiet the same personality with me. His quotes alive my soul. This picture, I took in front of one mirror... would like to introduce my great companion to everyone, which is my camera... my instrument of love and revelation on this journey.

“Some photographers take reality...and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.” — Ansel Adams