Ansel Adams Medal Of Freedom
Slideshow: Sierra Social club 1928 High Trip Photo Album
Ansel Adams was a visionary figure in nature photography and wilderness preservation. He is seen as an ecology folk hero and a symbol of the American West, especially of Yosemite National Park. Adams' dedication to wilderness preservation, his commitment to the Sierra Club, and of course, his signature blackness-and-white photographs inspire an appreciation for natural beauty and a potent conservation ethic.
Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was born in San Francisco four years before the not bad earthquake of 1906. An aftershock of the earthquake threw him to the ground, breaking his nose and mark him for life. He spent his childhood days playing in the sand dunes beyond the Aureate Gate where he gained an appreciation for nature, which would become his primary source of photographic inspiration.
Adams beginning visited Yosemite in 1916 -- only two years after John Muir's death and three months before the founding of the National Park Service -- and was transfixed past the cute valley. In 1919, at age 17, he had his first contact with the Sierra Social club when he took a job as custodian of the Club's LeConte Memorial Lodge, the Social club headquarters in Yosemite National Park.
Adams' interest in photography grew and ofttimes brought him up to the mountains accompanied past a mule laden with photographic gear and supplies.
In 1927, Adams participated in the Club'south annual outing, known as the High Trip, and, the next twelvemonth, he became the Lodge'south official trip photographer. In 1930 he became banana director of the outings which consisted of month-long excursions of upward to 200 people.
Adams' part in the Sierra Society grew rapidly and the Social club became vital to his early success as a photographer. His first photographs and writings were published in the Sierra Gild Message. Adams also got involved politically in the Guild, suggesting proposals for improving parks and wilderness, and soon became known equally both an artist and defender of Yosemite. In 1934, Adams was elected as a fellow member of the Lath of Directors of the Sierra Society, a role he maintained for 37 years. His tenure spanned the years that the Club evolved into a powerful national organisation that lobbied to create national parks and protect the environment from destructive development projects.
Adams' images were first used for environmental purposes when the Sierra Society was seeking the cosmos of a national park in the Kings River region of the Sierra Nevada. Adams lobbied Congress for a Kings Canyon National Park, the Order'south priority issue in the 1930's, and created an impressive, limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and President Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea. The park was created in 1940.
In 1968 Adams was awarded the Conservation Service Award, the Interior Department'south highest civilian honor, "in recognition of your many years of distinguished work every bit a photographer, creative person, interpreter and conservationist, a role in which your efforts have been of profound importance in the conservation of our great natural resources." In 1980 Adams received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for "his efforts to preserve this land'southward wild and scenic areas, both on flick and on earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature'due south monuments, he is regarded past environmentalists as a national institution."
Adams was oftentimes criticized for not including humans in his photographs and for representing an idealized wilderness that no longer exists. However, it is in big part thanks to Adams that these pristine areas have been protected for years to come.
Why was Ansel Adams revered by Americans as no other artist or conservationist has been? William Turnage explains: "More than any other influential American of his epoch, Adams believed in both the possibility and the probability of humankind living in harmony and residual with its environment."
Ansel Adams was a dedicated artist-activist, playing a seminal role in the growth of an environmental consciousness in the U.S. and the development of a citizen environmental movement. His photographs continue to inspire the artist and conservationist alike.
Photographs of Ansel Adams courtesy Cedric Wright/Sierra Club Archives. All rights reserved.
Ansel Adams Medal Of Freedom,
Source: https://vault.sierraclub.org/history/ansel-adams/
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