Adams and The Zone
Cnn has a nice article talking about the return to the US of the "Adams at 100' retrospective exhibit. My own personal passion for photgraphy got much of it's start in the the B&W masterpieces of Ansal Adams.
What gets lost in the article is the effort in the darkroom that created so many of his great works. "Moonrise: Hernandez, New Mexico" is one of my all time favorite prints. What the article doesn't mention is that Adams for a long time thought this was a failed image. Because of the speed with which it was taken, it did not have the strength of his more controled shots. It took him many sleepless nights in the darkroom to acheive the tonal range, and the subtle beauty of the finished image.
It is for that reason that I get a great laugh out of purist who hate digital and 'photoshoped' images. What is art, but a perfect moment of shared vision. It is an insight into the mind of the artist and the viewer. In this sense all images are not 'real', but simply a vision of some point in time, as shared by the viewer and the artist. Are Adams creations any less valid for the many hours of manipulation in the darkroom?
To be pure, you would need to print the uncropped image at one time setting, no dodging or burning allowed. You would need use the same chemicals, and the same paper for all images. How boring...mj
11:07:50 AM 
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