Ansel Adams (74 page)

 
27
       “Yosemite Studies by Adams,”
San Francisco Examiner
, June 26, 1932.

 
28
       Virginia Adams, interview with James Alinder, August 26–27, 1994.

 
29
       Richard Dillon,
California Trees Revisited
(Berkeley: University of California, 1981).

 
30
       “California Trees Competition,” Camera Craft 39 (November 1932), 481.

 
31
       “Establishing the exact date of the party takes a bit of detective work. First, Saturday was the traditional night to gather. On October 6th, Edward received his check for the ‘California Trees’ exhibition. On October 10th, he wrote to Willard that he really needed to get away. A letter from Edward to Ansel dated October 19 referred to Group
f
.64 and included a check for $10 as his contribution. In an undated letter from Edward to Ansel, the name for the group had not yet been decided, but Ansel had already met with Lloyd Rollins, director of the M.H. de Young Museum. That letter, written before the one of the 19th, can likely be dated Monday, October 17th. Therefore the Group
f
.64 party must have taken place after the 10th and before the 17th. The only Saturday that occurred during this period is October 15th, 1932.” Mary Street Alinder,
Group f.64
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 70. Edward wrote about attending the party in an entry in his daybook dated November 8, describing the event as having taken place a few weeks earlier.

 
               
Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, and Beaumont Newhall interview with the author, Adams’s home, Carmel Highlands, June 21, 1983. Edward Weston,
The Daybook of Edward Weston: Vol. 2, California
, ed. Nancy Newhall (New York: Horizon Press, 1966), 264; Edward Weston to Willard Van Dyke, October 10, 1932, in Leslie Squyres Calmes, ed.,
The Letters Between Edward Weston and Willard Van Dyke
(Tucson: Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1992), 7–8. Edward Weston to Ansel Adams, undated [October 17, 1932?] and October 19, 1932 postmark, CCP.

 
32
       Willard Van Dyke, “Autobiography,” unpublished manuscript, CCP. Read with the kind permission of Barbara Van Dyke.

 
33
       Willard Van Dyke, Ansel Adams, and Beaumont Newhall, interview with the author, June 21, 1983.

 
34
       “November 8, 1932,” Edward Weston,
The Daybooks of Edward Weston: California,
Nancy Newhall, ed. (New York and Rochester, N.Y.: Horizon Press and George Eastman House, 1966), 264–265.

 
35
       James Alinder, “The Preston Holder Story,”
Exposure
, February 1975, 2.

 
36
       Van Dyke, Adams, and Newhall, interview.

 
37
       An example of Ansel’s musical writing style for the letter
f
can be seen in Ansel Adams to Beaumont Newhall, July 11, 1949, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 210. The members of Group
f
.64 based their name on an idealistic f-stop, a tiny aperture that would be rarely or never used, but was symbolic of their cause. It is a bit confusing, because Group
f.
64 was written in more than one way. What is correct? Their memories are that they first conceived it as Group
f
.64, and used that on the cover of their invitation to their original exhibition. In the typewritten manuscript of the Group
f
.64 manifesto, all of the
f
’s are F’s, because the typewriter was unable to create italics, while the
f
in the announcement was drawn freehand. This explains why the italicized
f
was difficult to express, although this does not account for the change from lower case to upper case. Through the years, it was expressed as: Group
f
.64 announcement in 1932; Group F.64 Manifesto in 1932; Group f/64 in Edward’s
Daybooks
in 1932;
Group F-64 in many articles about them in the press; Group F 64 in an Ansel Adams Gallery announcement in 1933 and in his 1935 book,
Making a Photograph
; Group
f
.64 in John Paul’s 1935 article for
Camera Craft
; Group
f 64 in Willard’s 1938 article for
Scribner’s
; and Group f/64 in Ansel’s 1948
Camera & Lens
. I have chosen to use Group
f
.64 because it was their original choice and the only one that we know was agreed to by more than one member. Graphically, it is the most elegant design.

 
38
       Edward Weston to Ansel Adams, n.d., CCP. From the content it is clear that this letter was written either in late September or the first two weeks of October 1932.

 
       
In 1958, George M. Craven wrote a master of fine arts thesis for Ohio University entitled “Group f/64 and Its Relation to Straight Photography in America.” The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art published Craven’s essay “The Group f/64 Controversy” in 1963. Following his death, Craven’s wife, Rachel, was kind enough to give my husband, Jim, and me his Group
f.
64 files. A copy of this letter was included therein. CCP.

 
39
       Therese Thau Heyman, “Perspective on Seeing Straight,” in Therese Thau Heyman, ed.,
Seeing Straight: The f.64 Revolution in Photography
(Oakland: The Oakland Museum of California, 1992), 29.

 
40
       Susan Ehrens,
Alma Lavenson Photographs
(Berkeley, Calif.: Wildwood Arts, 1990).

 
41
       Holder became a professor of anthropology and chairman of that department at the University of Nebraska, where we became good friends during the 1970s. A brilliant and accomplished teacher, he would have been the first to admit that photography had been only a passing hobby when he knew Willard.

 
42
       Ansel Adams, Cash Receipts, 13. CCP.

 
43
       Ansel Adams to Willard Van Dyke, November 26, 1932, Paul Hertzmann Collection.

 
44
       “Group F.64 Manifesto,” in Heyman, ed.,
Seeing Straight
, 53.

 
45
       Included in Craven’s files was a photocopy of the final draft of the Group
f.
64 manifesto with corrections in Ansel’s hand.

 
46
       For his December 18, 1931, review for
The Fortnightly
, the typed manuscript Ansel submitted contained the spelling
technic
, which the magazine’s editor changed to
technique
in the published piece. Ansel’s later manuscripts for
The Fortnightly
contain the Americanized spelling of
technique
to conform with the magazine’s style.

 
47
       Herm Lenz, “Interview with Three Greats,”
U.S. Camera
18, no. 8 (August 1955): 87.

 
48
       Imogen Cunningham, “Interview with Imogen Cunningham,” an oral history conducted 1972, Donated Oral Histories Collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 8. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

 
               
Thirteen years earlier, Cunningham had remembered things differently: “In the main, the person who started this was Willard. I’ve been told that Ansel Adams claims he started it, but I would swear on my last penny that it was Willard who did it.” Imogen Cunningham, “Portraits, Ideas, and Design,” an oral history conducted 1959 by Edna Tartaul Daniel, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1961, 139.

 
49
       Van Dyke, Adams, and Newhall, interview.

 
50
       Ibid.

 
51
       Ibid.

 
52
       Maren Stange, ed.,
Paul Strand, Essays on his Life and Work
(New York: Aperture, 1990); and
Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Gilles Mora, and Karen E. Haas,
The Photography of Charles Sheeler, American Modernist
(Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2002).

 
53
       John Paul Edwards, “Group F:64,”
Camera Craft
42 (March 1935): 107–108, 110, 112–113.

 
54
       Ibid.; Ansel Adams, “Discussion on Filters,”
U.S. Camera
11 (October 1940): 57.

 
55
       An example: Ansel Adams,
Table Set
, reproduced in
Making a Photograph: An Introduction to Photography
, vol. 8 in the How to Do It Series (New York and London: The Studio Publications, 1935), pl. 23.

 
56
       
Bridalveil Fall
,
Yosemite National Park
(ca. 1927), A. Adams,
Classic Images
, pl. 3.

 
57
       “A superb study of water, considered by the photographer his best landscape.” Caption for
Nevada Fall
,
Yosemite Valley
, “The New Photography,”
Modern Photography 1934–35: The Studio Annual of Camera Art
(London and New York: The Studio Publications, Inc., 1934), plate 1.

 
58
       Reproduced in A. Adams,
Classic Images
, pl. 11.

 
59
       Ansel Adams,
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
(Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1983), 18–21.

 
60
       A. Adams,
Making a Photograph
, pl. 23.

 
61
       Reproduced in A. Adams,
Examples
, 10.

 
62
       John Szarkowski, “Kaweah Gap and Its Variants,” in
Ansel Adams: 1902–1984
(Carmel: The Friends of Photography, 1984), 15.

 
63
       Helen LeConte, who was along on the 1932 Outing, remembered it as the best Outing ever. One older woman was scandalized by the naked swimming and loudly complained. As a joke Ansel and Virginia formed a Morals Committee and elected Virginia vice president. Helen LeConte, “Reminiscences of LeConte Family Outings, the Sierra Club, and Ansel Adams,” an oral history conducted 1972, 1974, 1975 by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, “Sierra Club Women II,” Sierra Club History Committee, Sierra Club, San Francisco, 1977, 66. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library.

 
64
       Szarkowski, “Kaweah Gap and Its Variants,” 15.

 
65
       Lloyd LaPage Rollins to Edward Weston, March 29, 1935, CCP. For more information on Rollins see M. Alinder,
Group f.64
.

 
66
       
California Arts and Architecture
43 (May 1933): 6.

 
67
       James Thurber, “Has Photography Gone Too Far?”
The New Yorker
, August 11, 1934, reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, ed.,
Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), 335–338.

 
68
       Mary Street Alinder, “Group
f
.64 and Closely Related Exhibitions 1932–1940,”
Group f.64
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 297–307.

 
69
       Lorenz,
Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End
, 24.

 
70
       Whitney Chadwick,
Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1985).

 
71
       Barbara Rose,
American Painting: The Twentieth Century
(New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 23.

 
72
       J. Alinder, “The Preston Holder Story,” 2.

 
73
       Van Dyke, Adams, and Newhall interview.

 
74
       Ansel Adams to Edward Weston, November 29, 1934, in M. Alinder and Stillman,
Letters and Images
, 72–74; Edward Weston to Ansel Adams, December 3, 1934, ibid., 75–76.

 
75
       In 1934, Ansel wrote that the current members of Group
f
.64 were himself, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham, Consuelo Kanaga, Dorothea Lange, Henry Swift, and John Paul Edwards. Ansel Adams, unpublished “Statement for Camera Craft,” undated [summer or fall 1934], Adams archive CCP. In 1935, John Paul Edwards stated that Dorothea Lange, William Simpson, and Peter Stackpole were new members of Group
f
.64. John Paul Edwards, “Group F: 64,”
Camera Craft
, March 1937, 107. The historian’s historian, Beaumont Newhall, declared that Dorothea became a member of Group
f
.64 soon after its founding. Beaumont Newhall, “The Questing Photographer: Dorothea Lange,”
Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman
(Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1967), 5–6. Ansel invited both Lange and Stackpole to teach photography classes during the late 1930s and into the 1940s. Peter Stackpole insisted until he died in 1997 that he had been a member of Group
f
.64.