This Week in the Art Scene in the United States - 2003-07-17

New York: Ansel Adams' photo exhibition celebrates the centenary of the photographer who uniquely captured nature. The Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition of Ansel Adams' works to commemorate the 100th birthday of the great and late photographer. Those who knew Ansel Adams say that his perception and emotional connection with nature was a gift within him, evident in his photographs of Alaska and the meadows of Yosemite National Park in California. Ansel Adams was a visualizer of nature's grandeur, continuing this work until his death in 1984. He often revisited his old negatives and reprinted them, but this time he altered the play of light and shadow during exposure. John Szarkowski, the former director of the museum's photography department, took six years to select 113 photographs from Adams' works between 1920 and 1950. He believes that 'the subtlety of Adams' work lies beyond his fame, which is largely attributed to his technical prowess in capturing naturalistic images... Adams did not approach nature with a pre-designed and organized plan and did not believe that, for example, high mountains were better than low ones or that small hills in a photo were better than showing a blade of grass... If Mr. Adams had a weakness in his work, it was photographing people. He once told me he liked to photograph people as if they were ancient Greek vases.' The late Adams was the president of the largest private environmental protection organization in the U.S., the Sierra Club, from 1934 to 1971. His centennial memorial exhibition started in San Francisco and was displayed in Chicago, London, Berlin, and Los Angeles.