Ansel Adams
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, about 1937
Ansel Adams in Our Time – MFA Boston The exhibition presents some of Ansel Adams’s most renowned works, and connects him to his 19th-century predecessors as well as more than 20 contemporary artists who are reckoning with the same subjects and themes today. December 13, 2018–February 24, 2019.]]>
Source: MFA Boston
Captured with unrivaled sensitivity and rigorous exactitude, Ansel Adams’ black-and-white photographs of the American Western landscape constitute an iconic visual legacy.
While crafting his own modernist vision, Adams was inspired by forerunners in government survey and expedition photography such as Carleton Watkins (1829–1916), Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) and Frank Jay Haynes (1853–1921), in some cases replicating their exact views of the Yosemite Valley, Canyon de Chelly and Yellowstone to produce images that would become emblematic of the country’s national parks.
Today, artists including Mark Klett (born 1962), Trevor Paglen (born 1974), Catherine Opie (born 1961), Abelardo Morell (born 1948), Victoria Sambunaris (born 1964) and Binh Danh (born 1977) are responding to Adams, drawn not only to the same locations, but also many of the themes central to his legacy: desert and wilderness spaces, Native Americans and the Southwest, and broader issues affecting the environment such as logging, mining, drought and fire, booms and busts, development and urban sprawl. The Adams photographs in the exhibition are part of the Lane Collection—one of the largest and most significant gifts in MFA history—while a number of the works by 19th-century photographers and contemporary artists are on loan from public institutions, galleries and private collections.
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