Born in San Francisco in an area close to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a successful businessman who owned an insurance company and a chemical factory, and Olive Bray. At age 4, after the earthquake of 1906, he fell and fractured his nose, which will be changed in your profile for a lifetime. He does not like school and studies in 1914, twelve years, began studying piano at the age of twenty years only to abandon it around.
In 1916, at age 14, while vacationing with his family to Yosemite National Park, he was a present from his first camera, a Kodak Brownie. The nature and photography since then will be linked forever to his life. The passionate environmentalist, however, shines in all his works.In 1919 he enrolled in the "Sierra Club", one of the oldest and most important U.S. environmental organizations. Shortly before it was recovered from the Spanish called, which killed fifty million people around the world.
In 1927 participates in the annual trip of the club, known as the High Trip. In that year he published his first portfolio: Prints of the High Sierra Parmelian financed by Albert Bender knew the first year at Berkeley. Earn about $ 4000.
In 1928 he became the official photographer for the Sierra Club, but does not leave his passion, and is working well to support people who participate in the excursions, which sometimes last for weeks, as assistant director of the tour. The same year he married Virginia Best, daughter of the owner of Best's Studio, which will be inherited by his daughter in 1935 when his father died. The study is now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery.
In 1932 he founded the Group f/64 photographers to bring together some members of the so-called straight photography: John Paul Edwards, Imogen Cunningham, Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston. The name refers to the minimum aperture lens that would allow the maximum depth of field and more accurate details.In 1934 he joined the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club and will remain a member, along with his wife, for life. He is the author of many first ascents in the Sierra Nevada. His photographs are a testimony of what they were before the national parks of human intervention and mass travel. His work has sponsored many of the goals of the Sierra Club and brought environmental issues to light.
Adams invented the zone system, a technique that allows photographers to translate the light they see into specific densities on negatives and paper, resulting in better control over finished photographs. He was also a pioneer of the idea of ??"visualization" of the finished print based on the measured values ??of light in the scene being photographed.
Workers in front of Mount Williamson (1943) The photographs in limited edition book Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, along with his testimony, have helped ensure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as a national park in 1940.
He took to heart the issue of internment nippo-Americans who followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, so that he was allowed to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson.Canyon as a national park in 1940.
He took to heart the issue of internment nippo-Americans who followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, so that he was allowed to visit the Manzanar War Relocation Center in Owens Valley, at the foot of Mount Williamson. The photo essay was first exhibited in an exhibition in a museum of modern art, and later was published as Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California ("Born Free and equal: nippo photographs of loyal Americans to Manzanar relocation center, Inyo County, California ").
He was the recipient of three Guggenheim fellowships during his carriera.Fu elected in 1966 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of his country.
Publishing rights for the Adams' photographs are held by Adams Publishing Rights Trust dell'Ansel administrators.
In 1984, the "Minarets Wilderness" dell'Inyo National Forest was renamed the "Ansel Adams Wilderness." Mount Ansel Adams, a peak of 3,584 meters in the Sierra Nevada, it was renamed in 1986.