I was just in Phoenix for a couple readings, and I stopped in at the Phoenix Art Museum - a really great building btw, excellent design - and they had a show of
Ansel Adams' work from the collection at the Center for Creative Photography down in Tucson. Amazing to think that when Adams was looking for a place to bestow his work, no one wanted it except the Center for Creative Photography. So they got it all (if I am remembering the story correctly.) Anyway, the prints were terrific, most of them done by Adams or while Adams was alive, contemporary to the creation of the negative. Several had comparisons set up to show how Adams revisited the negative over his career. The "Moonrise, Hernandez" was presented as original negative, 1st contact print, and then several subsequent prints ranging from early in his career to later (and from small to large prints as well.) There was a monumental print of "Monolith, Half-Dome" that was done later in his career, and it was compared to a smaller, less contrasty version from nearly the same time as the negative was produced (about 1927.) Very interesting for a photographer to see these.
The museum also had a number of Adams' color works in their original dye transfer prints (the technique that Eliot Porter and William Eggleston made famous) then in cibachrome/C-print and then finally in digital prints. The colors were much better in the digital versions, but there really was no comparison in detail. Digital prints just mash the fine detail that photographic prints render without even breaking a sweat. The difference between mechanical rendering and chemical rendering I guess. I would like to see a big show of his color work though. I haven't really seen much of it before, and this little taste (about 6-8 images) was not enough.
Anyway, the show is highly recommended should you find yourself in Phoenix with some free time. Ansel Adams has his fans and his detractors, but I think you can learn from his work whatever your view might be, especially when it is curated in the way the Phoenix Art Museum did. They were of course selling a bunch of books in the museum shop, but I didn't get any. It would have required a second suitcase home. But the
Ansel Adams at 100 looked pretty good.
