Ansel Adams set the bar for landscape photography, and his images of America's National Parks have come to define them. An avid hiker in his youth and member of Sierra Club since his teens, Adams rejected the soft pictorialism of the 1930s and went for a more realistic approach, using a small aperture and long exposure, which produced sharp details and wide range of focus. He was a master printer and used the zone system and the full tonal range to create dynamic images of nature, sometimes printing up to 1300 versions of the same negative. Halsman too had rejected soft pictoralism in favor of a stronger image, and Halsman also was a master printer in the darkroom. In this 1958 private shoot, I can’t help but think Halsman lit Adams in a way that referenced Adam’s own portraits of Half Dome in Yosemite. The volumetric curve of Adam's head pops out against a black background, as Adam’s often burned in the sky so that the geological formation he was photographing stood out in greater contrast. The magical twinkle in Adam's eyes is reinforced by the ripples of wrinkles that emanate concentrically outwards. We see the portrait of a man who had won Guggenheim Fellowships, helped start the photo dept. at MoMA, helped found Aperture magazine in 1952, and co-founded the Center for Creative Photography. Halsman and Adam’s exchanged correspondence a few years before the shoot regarding the ASMP (American Society of Magazine Photographers) of which Halsman was the president, and Adams a member. We can see that an envelope from the organization was used to store the 4x5 negatives and contact prints. ASMP was a platform where Halsman could be a fierce advocate for photographers retaining their copyrights, and raising professional standards. In 1978 Adam’s paid Halsman the greatest compliment one photographer can give to another, by using a portrait from this 1958 shoot as the biographical photo for his latest book.
