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Indepth Arts News:
"The Ansel Adams Centennial: Classic Images and A Portrait of Ansel Adams"
2002-03-08 until 2002-07-07
Center for Creative Photography
Tucson, AZ,
USA
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona will present The Ansel Adams Centennial, a pair of exhibitions on view from March 9 to July 7, 2002. Together they celebrate the 100th birthday of American photography's most recognized and beloved
figure through his legendary images and fascinating life.
The Ansel Adams Centennial is drawn from the Ansel Adams Archive at CCP, the
largest repository of his work in the world. The archive includes voluminous
correspondence, book layouts and manuscripts, ledgers, periodicals and
monographs, camera equipment, memorabilia, and over 20,000 negatives and
proof prints. Approximately 2,500 exhibition prints crown the world's most
extensive public holding of Adams' photographs. Classic Images features an
impressive array of photographs from the book of the same name, works chosen
by Adams to represent his most enduring images and to stand as a
last-statement portfolio of his remarkable life's work. Marcia Tiede,
curator of Classic Images and CCP Curatorial Associate and Cataloger
explains, Classic Images was Ansel Adams' own assessment of his most
significant images and reveals important insights into his creative process.
It celebrates how stunning his photographs are, and the range of subjects
and imagery-including some lesser known works-most valued by him at the end
of his epic career.
A Portrait of Ansel Adams presents unique objects from his extraordinary
archive, such as his 8 x 10 metal view camera, correspondence with some of
the most important figures in the history of photography, and his first
portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. Accompanying the objects
will be dozens of portraits of Adams by artists such as Imogen Cunningham,
Dorothea Lange, John Sexton, Jerry Uelsmann, Edward Weston, and Cedric
Wright, who were his friends, students, and admirers-portraits selected from
the Ansel Adams Archive and other CCP collections. CCP Archivist Leslie
Calmes selected the images and objects for A Portrait of Ansel Adams. This
selection exemplifies how the contents of a research archive can inform the
art it documents. By looking at letters, manuscripts, books, magazines, and
proof prints, the career of a photographer as famous and influential as
Ansel Adams becomes even richer and more three-dimensional. In addition,
with his collection of portraits, visitors can follow Adams' path from
youthful amateur to acknowledged master of the medium he devoted his life
to.
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona was
co-founded by Ansel Adams in 1975, and is an archive, museum, and research
institution, dedicated to photography as an art form and cultural record.
CCP holds more archives and individual works by 20th-century North American
photographers than any other museum in the nation, including the archives of
over sixty major photographers-Richard Avedon, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Harry
Callahan, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston,
and Garry Winogrand, among them-whose prints are the centerpiece of an art
collection numbering more than 60,000 works by 2,000 photographers. CCP has
an integrated program of preservation, access, and education that celebrates
the history of photography and its contemporary practice. Visitors enjoy a
changing exhibition program, Research Center, educational programs, Library,
Museum Store, and public access to the vast collection through the renowned
PrintViewing program.
IMAGE:
Photograph by Ansel Adams.
Sand Dunes, Sunrise,
Death Valley National Monument, CA, 1948
from Classic Images. (c) Trustees of the Ansel Adams
Publishing Rights Trust.
Collection Center for Creative Photography,
The University of Arizona / Ansel Adams Archive.
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