Description

Photographer Ansel Adams captured the black and white image in Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley, California in 1944. The photograph was printed in the 1970s. The foreground of the image overlooks Yosemite Valley, teeming with snow-dusted trees. In the bottom right corner of the print stand two dark trees that reach halfway up the photograph. As the eye moves deeper into the image, on the left a steep embankment runs down into the valley, and a towering mountain peers out of the cloudy sky. On the right of the print a mountain range wraps around, ending in one smaller peak with petite trees delicately protruding from the top. Cascading from this smaller peak, unnoticeable at first glance, is a small waterfall that initially appears to be snow falling and creating a pile in the trees below. This small peak and waterfall form the most illuminated part of the image.

Context and Analysis

Ansel Adams is one of the best known and most loved American photographers. He was first exposed to Yosemite in 1916 at the age of fourteen. After a cold left the boy bedridden, his Aunt May, in an effort to keep him entertained, brought him the book In the Heart of the Sierras by J. M. Hutchings. The book was packed with maps, engravings, and photographs of Yosemite Valley. The boy became fascinated, and later that year, driven by his new interest in Yosemite, Ansel and his parents, Charlie and Ollie, traveled to the national park. To record their vacation, his parents gave Ansel his first camera, a Kodak Brownie. It was during this trip that he developed his passion for Yosemite and nature. “Nature became his religion, and Yosemite and the surrounding Sierra Nevada his temple.”1 He returned to the valley every year for the rest of his life.

Adams focused on photographing subjects that were permanent, such as landscapes, while also examining the ever-shifting effects of light. He believed his images of mountains could communicate directly with the viewer. Thus, with the start of World War II, “his photographs from the early 1940s became expansive and heroic.” 2 Although he was ineligible to serve on active duty, he desperately wanted to be part of the war effort. He was able to find minor roles, such as teaching photography to army officers, and he worked with Dorothea Lange for the Office of War Information. His most important contribution, however, was showing America what it was fighting for. Clearing Winter Storm is one example of these epic photographs that captured what he thought was the glory of the country. In these works he makes “visual equivalents to American values: a great democratic country, with wide, sweeping landscapes of grandeur and majesty.” 3 Clearing Winter Storm is the most successful of dozens of photographs Adams took from the same location over many years.

Connections

Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke founded the American photography group called F64 as a way to organize some of their fellow photographers who shared a common photographic style. This style was characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly western viewpoint. The group consisted of seven San Francisco photographers: Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, William Van Dyke, and Edward Weston. The Currier’s photography collection includes works by several of these photographers, in addition to Adams: Noskowiak (Currier, 2011.21 ), Van Dyke (Currier, 2011.29), and Edward Weston (Currier, 1984.55).

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, photographer Carl Hyatt began his photography career at the Ansel Adams Photography Workshop in Yosemite. It was during his time there that his interest in photography fully developed. As a protégé of Adams, Hyatt photographed the artist in 1971. This portrait (Currier, 2006.36) is featured in the Currier Museum of Art’s collection along with eight other works by the artist.

Written by Ashlee Bailey

Notes
1M. Alinder 1996, 26.
2J. Alinder 1985, 17.
3J. Alinder 1985, 17.

Bibliography

Alinder, James. “Ansel Adams, American Artist.” In Ansel Adams: Classic Images. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1985, 17–22.

Alinder, Mary Street. Anselm Adams: A Biography. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.