Ansel Adams

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Jennifer Jankauskas

Photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams is legendary for his landscapes of the American Southwest, and primarily Yosemite State Park. For his images, he developed the zone system of photography, a way to calculate the proper exposure of a photograph by rendering the representation into a range of ten specific gray tones. The resulting clarity and depth were characteristic of the photographs produced by the group f/64, an association founded by Adams and fellow photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. Adams' other important contribution in the development of photography as an artform was his key role in the founding of the Museum of Modern Art's department of photography with curator Beaumont Newhall. Adams' timeless photographs are endlessly in reproduction for calendars and posters, making his images instantaneously recognizable. Ansel Adams has become one of the most popular and familiar of photographers.