Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dtkg6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-11T14:29:29.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Art of Disengagement: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

David P. Peeler
David P. Peeler
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of History, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD 21402–5044, U.S.A.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Edward Weston (1886–1958) and Ansel Adams (1902–1984) were two of the foremost American photographers of the twentieth century. In their own day Weston and Adams attracted the attention of both critics and collectors, and more recently they have been given prominent places in the scholarship and exhibitions accompanying photography's 150th anniversary. These two Californians were good friends, achieved an influential modernist aesthetic, and created images with an enduring power and grace. They concentrated upon natural subjects, Adams tending towards monumental depictions of hulking mountains or clouds, and Weston tending more toward intense close ups of smaller objects such as fruits and vegetables. Such subjects were consistent with their deepest principles, for Weston and Adams believed that the artist should remain beyond the turmoil and confusion of current events, and instead focus upon the more enduring and transcendent qualities of nature. Thus stability and solidity became the leitmotifs of Adams's art, and even in those photographs where he included some turbulence to counterbalance the granite of his compositions – images such as Nevada Fall, Yosemite National Park (c. 1946) (figure 1) – Adams usually chose to focus upon the rush of a mountain stream or some other natural movement, rather than the social or political currents of his day. Likewise Weston brought a deep timelessness to his photographs. Images like Shell (1927) (figure 2) seem to hover in a decontextualized void of shimmering geometrical shapes, and have little connection to the predatory forces or environmental disasters that may have threatened a particular mollusk.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , December 1993 , pp. 309 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Greenough, Sarah, Snyder, Joel, Travis, David and Westerbeck, Colin, eds., On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and fifty Years of Photography (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1989)Google Scholar. Weaver, Mike, The Art of Photography, 1839–1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

2 On the modernist rejection of Victorianism, see Orvell, Miles, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For a discussion of romanticism in creative photography, see Bogardus, Ralph, “The Twilight of Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Weston and the End of Nineteenth-Century Literary Nature,” Prospects, 12 (1987), 347–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Adams, Ansel (with Mary Street Alinder), An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 122Google Scholar. Weston, Edward to Stieglitz, Alfred, 11 1921 [misdated-should be 1922]Google Scholar, in Reyher, Ferdinand, comp., “Stieglitz-Weston Correspondence,” Photo Notes (Spring 1949), 11.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of Stieglitz's abiding influence in American photography, see Fulton, M., “Stieglitz to Caponigro: An American Photographic Tradition,” Image, 26 (06 1983), 10–24.Google Scholar

5 Weston, Edward to Hagemeyer, Johan, 23 02 1922Google Scholar, Edward Weston and Johan Hagemeyer Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (CCP). Adams, Ansel to Stieglitz, Alfred, 23 10 1933Google Scholar. Ansel Adams Archive, CCP. Ansel Adams, statement for Portfolio One, c. October 1948, typewritten manuscript, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP. Adams, Ansel to Stieglitz, Alfred, 29 11 1936, Ansel Adams Archive.Google Scholar

6 May, Henry F., The End of American Innocence (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1959)Google Scholar; Diggins, John P., The American Left in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973)Google Scholar; Abrahams, Edward, The Lyrical Left: Randolph Bourne, Alfred Stieglitz and the Origins of Cultural Radicalism in America (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986)Google Scholar; Pells, Richard, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 40–42Google Scholar; Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1929, 1986), 185.Google Scholar

7 Weston, Edward, The Daybooks of Edward Weston, 2 vols. (Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1961, 1973), 1 (20 08 1923), 15Google Scholar. For Weston's relationship to Modotti, see Stark, Amy, “The Letters from Tina Modotti to Edward Weston,” The Archive, 22 (01 1986), 3–81.Google Scholar

8 Western, , Daybooks, 1 (10 03 1924), 56.Google Scholar

9 Weston, , Daybooks, 1 (08 1923), 19Google Scholar. For more on Weston and the Revolution, see Kramer, Hilton, “Edward Weston's Privy and the Mexican Revolution,” New York Times (7 05 1972)Google Scholar, here from Newhall, Beaumont and Conger, Amy, eds., Edward Weston Omnibus: A Critical Analogy (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1984), 156.Google Scholar

10 Adams, Ansel to “Pa, Ma, and Aunt Mary,” “Sunday” [early 03, 1933], Ansel Adams Archive, CCP.Google Scholar

11 Adams, to “Pa, Ma, and Aunt Mary,” “Sunday” [early 03, 1933]Google Scholar. Adams, Charles to Adams, Ansel, 21 07 1934, Ansel Adams Archive, CCP.Google Scholar

12 Adams, Ansel Easton, “Retrospective: Nineteen-Thirty-One,” Sierra Club Bulletin, 17 (02 1932), 1, 9.Google Scholar

13 Adams, Ansel to Western, Edward, 29 11 1934Google Scholar; Weston, Edward to Adams, Ansel, 3 12 1934Google Scholar; Ansel Adams Archive, CCP. Benjamin, Walter, “A Short History of Photography,” 1931, translated in Artforum, 15 (02 1977), 50.Google Scholar

14 Weston, , Daybooks, 2 (8 11 1932), 265.Google Scholar

15 The Group f/64 Manifesto is reproduced in Adams, , Autobiography, 111–12Google Scholar. Weston, , Daybooks, 2 (8 11 1932), 265.Google Scholar

16 For the broader concern with American themes, see Alexander, Charles C., Here the Country Lies: Nationalism and the Arts in Twentieth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Wilson, Charis and Weston, Edward, California and the West (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1978, 1940)Google Scholar. Weston spent 1937 traveling in the West while on a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1941 he was commissioned to photograph throughout the country for a special edition of Whitman's, WaltLeaves of GrassGoogle Scholar. For a further discussion of Weston's increasingly expansive vision, see Grundberg, Andy, “Edward Weston's Late Landscapes,” in Bunnell, Peter C. and Featherstone, David, eds. EW: 100: Centennial Essays in Honor of Edward Weston (Untitled 41) (Carmel, CA: The Friends of Photography, 1986), 93–101.Google Scholar

17 Landau, Ellen G., Artists for Victory (Washington: Library of Congress, 1983)Google Scholar; Peeler, David P., Hope Among Us Yet: Social Criticism and Social Solace in Depression America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 278–81.Google Scholar

18 Weston, Edward to Newhall, Nancy, 20 09 1942Google Scholar; Weston, Edward to Dewey, Thomas E., 30 10 1944Google Scholar; Weston, Edward to Van Dyke, Willard, 8 03 1943Google Scholar; Weston, Edward to Weston, Neil, 1 01 1942, and 18 06 1945Google Scholar; in Edward Weston Archive, CCP.

19 Wilson, Charis, remembrance in Edward Weston Nudes: His Photographs Accompanied by Excerpts from the Daybooks & Letters (New York: Aperture, 1977), 15–16Google Scholar. See also Weston, Edward to Newhall, Nancy, 21 09 1943Google Scholar, and Weston, Edward to Beaumont, and Newhall, Nancy, 11 05 1943Google Scholar, both in Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP.

20 Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Beaumont, Sunday, 12 1942(?)Google Scholar, and Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, 14 09 1942Google Scholar, in Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP; Adams, , Autobiography, 312–14.Google Scholar

21 Weston, Edward to Editor, Monterey Peninsula Herald, 25 04 1945, Edward Weston Archive, Ccp.Google Scholar

22 Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, Fall 1943Google Scholar, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP; Adams, Ansel, Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the Loyal Japanese–Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California (New York: U.S. Camera, 1944)Google Scholar. For the context of Adams's Manzanar work, see Jacobs, David, “Three Mormon Towns,” exposure, 25 (Summer 1987), 5–25Google Scholar; Grover, Jan Zita, “The Winner Names the Age: Historicism and Ansel Adams's Manzanar Photographs,” Afterimage, 16 (04 1989), 14–18Google Scholar; and Ohrn, Karin Becker, “What You See Is What You Get: Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams at Manzanar,” Journalism History, 4 (Spring 1977), 14–32ff.Google Scholar

23 Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, Fall 1945Google Scholar, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP; Weston, Edward to unknown male, “my boy” whose friend was refusing draft induction, 1944 or 1945, Edward Weston Archive, CCPGoogle Scholar. See also Weston, Edward to Weston, Neil, 7 05 1942, Edward Weston Archive, CCP.Google Scholar

24 Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, 12 05 1948Google Scholar, and Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Beaumont, 15 06 1954Google Scholar, both from Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP. One should note that Adams's support for Wallace weakened when Wallace seemed unable to denounce the Soviets; Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, 03 28, 1949Google Scholar, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP; Weston, Edward to Weston, Neil, 27 11 1944Google Scholar, Edward Weston Archive, CCP; Weston, Cole, Afterword in Maddow, Ben, Edward Weston, His Life and Photographs: The Definitive Volumes of His Photographic Work (Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1979), revised edition, 287Google Scholar. According to his son/candidate, Weston pere even photographed Wallace. Both Henry Wallace and Cole Weston lost their bids for office. There were close ties between the Progressive Party and photographers. The Party's 1948 platform included a plank, authored by Paul Strand, calling for a permanent national Bureau of Fine Arts that would, among other things, institute a new photographic project akin to the Farm Security Administration effort of the Roosevelt years. See Strand, Paul, “A Platform for Artists,” Photo Notes (Fall 1948), 14–15.Google Scholar

25 Adams, Ansel, reprinted letter to the editor of Photo Notes, here from U.S. Camera, 1 (10 1940), 11Google Scholar; Adams, Ansel to Nancy, and Newhall, Beaumont, envelope postmarked 9 07 1947Google Scholar, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP; scribbled on back of the envelope: “I joined the Photo-League!” Even after he joined the League, Adams had strong stylistic disagreements with other members; see Tucker, Anne Wilkes, “The Lively Debate,” in Alinder, James, ed., Ansel Adams 1902–1984 (Untilled 37) (Carmel, CA, Friends of Photography, 1984).Google Scholar

26 Adams, Ansel to Newhall, Nancy, 23 06 1949Google Scholar, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Archive, CCP. Adams resigned with considerably more attention to detail than he had used in joining the League in the first place, for on the advice of his attorney he made sure that the FBI had a carbon copy of his resignation letter. For a collection of protests against League blacklisting, including Weston's wire and Adams's letter, see Photo Notes, Special Number, 01 1948.Google Scholar

27 Adams, Ansel and Newhall, Nancy, This Is the American Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club 1960), 28Google Scholar; Adams, Ansel to Weston, Edward, 15 05 1955, Ansel Adams Archive, CCPGoogle Scholar; Adams, , Autobiography, 350.Google Scholar

28 Adams, , Autobiography, 149, 254–7Google Scholar. Smith's, W. Eugene book MinamataGoogle Scholar is a scorching picture and word indictment of a chemical company that spread mercury poisoning throughout a local Japanese population: Smith, W. Eugene and Smith, Aileen M., Minamata (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).Google Scholar

29 Cowley, Malcolm, Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (New York: Viking, 1954, 1969)Google Scholar; Kazin, Alfred, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1942).Google Scholar

30 For more on the sense of redemption with the 1930s, see Peeler, , 60–69, 209–16.Google Scholar

31 Weston, Edward to Lerner, Miriam, 10 03 1955, Edward Weston Archive, CCP.Google Scholar