Ansel Adams

(1902-1984)
Environmentalist photographer

"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.  When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."

Ansel Easton Adams was a landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed in exposure, negative development, and printing.

+ Ansel Adams