A Chronology
By James Alinder


1902
Born Ansel Easton Adams on February 20, at 114 Maple Street, San Francisco, the only child of Olive Bray and Charles Hitchcock Adams.  The family home is completed the next year at 129 Twenty-fourth Avenue, in the sand dune area overlooking the Golden Gate.

1906
Family survives the great San Francisco earthquake, though Ansel falls during an aftershock and breaks his nose.

1907
Grandfather Adams dies and family lumber business fails, Charles Hitchcock Adams spends the rest of his life attempting to repay the debts of the failed business.

1908
An enormously curious and gifted child, Ansel begins a precarious journey through the rigid structure of the school system.  Grandfather Bray and Aunt Mary Bray come to live with his family.  Father’s parents’ home, “Unadilla,” in Atherton, California, burns to the ground.  

1914
Teaches himself to play the piano and excels at serious music study with Marie Butler.

1915
Despises the regimentation of a regular education, and is taken out of school.  For that year’s education, his father buys him a season pass to the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which he visits nearly every day.  Private tutors later provide continuing education.

1916
Convinces parents to take a family vacation in Yosemite National Park.  Begins to photograph there, using father’s box Brownie camera and develops an enthusiastic interest in both photography and the national park.  Returns to Yosemite every year for the rest of his life.

1917
Receives grammar school diploma from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School, San Francisco.  Though largely self-taught in photography, he works that summer and the next at Frank Dittman’s photo-finishing business.

1920
Spends the first of four summers as the custodian of the Sierra Club headquarters in Yosemite.  Photography becomes more than a hobby as he begins to articulate his ideas about the creative potentials of the medium.  Continues piano studies with professional ambitions, studying with Frederick Zech.

1921
Spends second summer in Yosemite.  Finds a piano to practice on at Best’s Studio, a Yosemite concession selling paintings, photographs, and gifts.  Meets Harry Best’s daughter, Virginia.  Takes first high-country trip into the Sierra with Francis “Uncle Frank” Holman and Mistletoe, the burro.

1922
Publishes first article, “On The Lyell Fork of the Merced River”, in the Sierra Club Bulletin.

1924
Explores Kings River Canyon with the Le Conte family.  Takes a similar trip the following summer.

1925
Decides to become a concert pianist and purchases a Mason and Hamlin grand piano, the finest available.

1926
Takes first trip to Carmel with Albert Bender, who becomes his first patron; meets Robinson Jeffers there.

1927
Makes the photograph Monolith, the Face of Half Dome.  He considers this image to be his first “visualization,” using the term to describe the photographer’s per-exposure determination of the visual and emotional qualities of the finished print.  Publishes initial portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras [sic] (San Francisco: Jean Chambers Moore).  Goes on first Sierra Club outing.  Travels with Bender in California and New Mexico, meets Mary Austin, Witter Bynner, and others.

1928
Marries Virginia Best in Yosemite.  First one-man-exhibition held at the Sierra Club, San Francisco.  His photographs will be included in more than five hundred exhibitions during his lifetime.

1929
Photographs at Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico for a book project.  In Taos, meets Georgia O’Keeffe and John Marin at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s estate.  In Yosemite, writes words, selects music and acts a leading role for The Bracebridge Dinner, a Christmas production that becomes an annual event.

1930
Meets Paul Strand in Taos, becomes committed to a full-time  career in photography after understanding Strand’s total dedication to creative photography and seeing his negatives.  Builds home and studio at 131 Twenty-fourth Avenue, San Francisco, adjoining parents’ home.  Publishes Taos Pueblo, containing twelve original photographs with text by Mary Austin.  Begins accepting commercial photography assignments, one of the first being catalogue pictures for Gump’s, the unique San Francisco specialty store.  Continues commercial work into the early 1970s.

1931
Begins writing photography column for The Fortnightly; reviews Eugene Atget and Edward Weston exhibitions at San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.  Exhibition of sixty prints at the Smithsonian Institute.

1932
Founding member of Group f/64 exhibition at the De Young; also has one-man show there.  Makes the photograph Frozen Lake and Cliffs.

1933
Son Michael born.  Meets Alfred Stieglitz at his gallery An American Place in New York City.  Opens Ansel Adams Gallery at 166 Geary Street, San Francisco, after return.  First New York City exhibition at Delphic Studio.

1934
Begins publishing a series of technical articles, “An Exhibition of my Photographic Technique,” in Camera Craft.  Writes a coherent thesis of his aesthetic beliefs, “The New Photography,” Modern Photography 1934-35 (London and New York: The Studio Publications).  First publication of his “Personal Credo” in Camera Craft.   Teaches in Art Students League Workshop in San Francisco.

1935
Daughter Anne born.  Publishes technical book, Making a Photograph; An Introduction to Photography (The Studio Publications).  First publication of his “Personal Credo” in Camera Craft.  Teaches in Art Students League Workshop in San Francisco.

1936
One-man exhibition at An American Place.  Lobbies congressmen in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Sierra Club for the establishment of Kings Canyon National Park.  Virginia inherits Best’s Studio after her father’s death.


1937
They move to Yosemite in the spring, where they take over the proprietorship of Best’s Studio.  His darkroom burns, destroying twenty percent of his negatives.  He continues to work and maintain his professional studio in San Francisco.  Takes photography treks with Edward Weston through the High Sierra, and with Georgia O’Keeffe and David McAlpin throughout the Southwest.  Photographs included in first photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.  Hires Rondal Partridge as photographic assistant through 1940.

1938
Takes O’Keeffe and McAlpin through Yosemite and on High Sierra explorations.  Photographs with Edward Weston in the Owens Valley.  Publishes Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Train (Berkeley: Archetype Press).

1939
Meets Beaumont and Nancy Newhall in New York.  Has major exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

1940
Teaches first workshop, the U.S. Camera Photographic Forum, in Yosemite with Edward Weston.  Organizes the exhibition and edits the catalogue for The Pageant of Photography held at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.  Helps to found the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with Newhall and McAlpin.

1941
Develops his Zone System technique of exposure and development control while teaching at Art Center School in Los Angeles.  Begins to photograph for the Department of the Interior, but project is cancelled because of world events in 1942.  Makes his best-known photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, on October 31 at 4:05 p.m.  Publishes Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley, text by Virginia Adams (The Studio Publications).

1942
Makes the photographs The Tetons and Snake River and Leaves, Mount Rainier.

1943
Photographs at Manzanar Relocation Center, begins “Born Free and Equal”  photo-essay on the loyal Japanese-Americans interned there.

1944
Makes the photographs Clearing Winter Storm and Winter Sunrise.  Paul Strand visits in Yosemite.  Publishes Born Free and Equal (New York: U.S. Camera).

1945
Makes the photograph Mount Williamson.

1946
Receives John Solomon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to photograph the National Parks and Monuments.  Founds Department of Photography at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, later renamed the San Francisco Art Institute.  Hires Minor White to teach with him.  Publishes Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley, with Virginia Adams (San Francisco: H.S. Crocker).

1947
Does extensive photography in the national parks, makes first photographic trips to Alaska and Hawaii.  Makes the photographs White Branches, Mono Lake, Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake.

1948
Guggenheim Fellowship renewed.  Makes the photographs Sand Dunes, Sunrise, and Tenya Creek, Dogwood, Rain.  Begins lifelong friendship with Dr. Edwin Land.  Sierra Club publishes Portfolio I, with twelve Adams photographs.  Published Basic Photo Series I: Camera and Lens and 2: The Negative (New York: Morgan & Morgan) and Yosemite and the High Sierra, edited by Charlotte E. Mauk with the selected words of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).

1949
Becomes consultant for newly founded Polaroid Corporation.

1950
Sierra Club publishes Portfolio II, The National Parks & Monuments, with fifteen photographs.  Publishes Basic Photo Series 3:  The Print (Morgan  & Morgan), My Camera in Yosemite Valley (Yosemite: V. Adams, and Boston: Houghton Mifflin)  My Camera in the National Parks and a reprint of the 1903 title The Land of Little Rain, text by Mary Austin, with Ansel Adams’ photographs (Houghton Mifflin).  His mother, Olive, dies.

1951
His father, Charles, dies.  Hires Pirkle Jones as his photographic assistant through 1953.

1952
Publishes Basic Photo Series 4: Natural-Light Photography (Morgan & Morgan).  Exhibition at the George Eastman House, Rochester.  Helps found Aperture, a journal of creative photography, with the Newhalls, Minor White, and others.

1953
Does Life photo-essay with Dorothea Lange on the Mormons in Utah.

1954
Publishes Death Valley (Palo Alto: 5 Associates), Mission San Xavier del Bac (5 Associates) and The Pageant of History in Northern California (San Francisco: American Trust Co.).  Nancy Newhall contributes the text for all three books.

1955
The Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshop, an intense short-term creative photography learning experience, begins as an annual event.

1956
Organizes with Nancy Newhall the exhibition This is the American Earth for circulation by the United States Information Service (USIS).  Publishes Basic Photo Series 5: Artificial-Light Photography (Morgan & Morgan).  Don Worth becomes a photographic assistant through 1960, and Gerry Sharpe works on special projects through the early 1960’s.

1957
Begins producing small, unsigned Special Edition Prints of a number of his Yosemite photographs, printed by assistants and for sale only at Best’s Studio as a quality souvenir of the park.  Film Ansel Adams, Photographer produced by Larry Dawson and directed by David Meyers; script by Nancy Newhall, narrated by Beaumont Newhall.

1958
Receives third Guggenheim Fellowship.  Makes the photographs Aspens, Northern New Mexico in both horizontal and vertical formats.  Publishes The Islands of Hawaii, text by Edward Joesting (Honolulu: Bishop National Bank of Hawaii).  Presented Brehm Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to photography by the Rochester Institute of Technology.

1959
Publishes Yosemite Valley, edited by Nancy Newhall (5 Associates).  Moderates a series of five films for television, Photography, the Intensive Art, directed by Robert Katz.

1960
Sierra Club publishes Portfolio III, Yosemite Valley, containing sixteen photographs.  Makes the photograph Moon and Half Dome.  Publishes This is the American Earth, text by Nancy Newhall (Sierra Club).

1961
Receives honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

1962
Builds a home and studio, designed by E.T. Spencer, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Carmel Highlands, California.  Over the next two decades, he produces in the spacious darkroom most of the fine prints made during his career. Publishes Death Valley and the Creek Called Furnace, text by Edwin Corle (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie) and These We Inherit; The Parklands of America (Sierra Club).

1963
The Eloquent Light, a retrospective exhibition with prints from 1923 to 1963, shown at the de Young Museum.  Receives John Muir Award.  Sierra Club publishes Portfolio IV, What Majestic Word, with fifteen photographs.  Publishes Polaroid Land Photographs Manual (Morgan & Morgan) and first volume of a biography, Ansel Adams: Volume I, The Eloquent Light, text by Nancy Newhall (Sierra Club).  Subsequent volumes were not completed.  Publishes revised edition of Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (Sierra Club).  Liliane De Cock becomes photographic assistant through 1971.  Begins annual New Year’s Day open house of his and Virginia’s friends.

1964
Publishes An Introduction to Hawaii, text by Edward Joesting (5 Associates).

1965
Takes an active role in President Johnson’s environmental task force, photographs published in the President’s report, A More Beautiful America… (New York: American Conservation Association).  Major exhibition, Ansel Adams: The Redwood Empire, held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, circulated a decade later by the California Historical Society.

1966
Elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1967
Founder, President and, later, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, of The Friends of Photography, Carmel.  Receives honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Occidental College.  Publishes Fiat Lux: The University of California, text by Nancy Newhall (New York: McGraw Hill).

1968
Makes the photograph El Capitan, Winter, Sunrise.  Receives Conservation Service Award from the US Department of Interior.

1969
Delivers Alfred Stieglitz Memorial Lecture at Princeton University.  Receives Progress Medal from the Photographic Society of America.

1970
Receives Chubb Fellowship from Yale University.  Parasol Press publishes Portfolio V, with ten prints.  Publishes The Tetons and the Yellowstone, text by Nancy Newhall (5 Associates) and revised edition of Basic Photo Series I: Camera and Lens (Morgan & Morgan).

1971
Resigns position as a director of the Sierra Club.  William A. Turnage hired and becomes his business manager until 1977.

1972
Exhibits retrospective Recollected Moments, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; show is sent by USIS to Europe and South America.  Publishes a monograph, Ansel Adams, edited by Liliane De Cock (Morgan & Morgan).  Best’s Studio is renamed the Ansel Adams Gallery.  Ted Orland becomes photographic assistant until 1974.

1973
Two exhibitions of Adams photographs organized and circulated by The Friends of Photography.  

1974
First trip to Europe, where he teaches at the Arles, France, Photography Festival.  Major exhibition, Photographs by Ansel Adams, initiated and circulated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, later travels to Europe and Russia, through 1977.  Receives honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Parasol Press publishes Portfolio VI, with ten prints.  Publishes Singular Images (Morgan & Morgan) and Images 1923-1974 (Boston: New York Graphic Society [NYGS]).  Andrea Gray becomes executive assistant until 1980, and Alan Ross becomes photographic assistant until 1979.



1975
Stops taking individual print orders at the end of the year, but the 3,000 photographs ordered by December 31 take three years to print.  Helps found the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where his archive is established.  Receives honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from that university.

1976
Parasol Press publishes Portfolio VII, with twelve images.  Meets President Ford at the White House to discuss environmental policy.  Returns to Arles Photography Festival during second European trip and photographs in Scotland, Switzerland, and France.  Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.  Begins exclusive publishing agreement with New York Graphic Society, a division of Little, Brown and Company.  Publishes Photographs of the Southwest (NYGS).  Lectures in London, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Diego.  Major exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

1977
Publishes The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (NYGS) and facsimile reprint of the book Taos Pueblo (NYGS).  With Virginia, endows curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art in honor of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.  Exhibition, Photographs of the Southwest 1928-1968, organized and circulated by the Center for Creative Photography.  Begins complete revision of his technical books with the collaboration of Robert Baker.

1978
Publishes Ansel Adams: 50 Years of Portraits, by James Alinder (Carmel: The Friends of Photography) Publishes Polaroid Land Photography (NYGS).  Elected Honorary Vice President of the Sierra Club.  Selected as an honorary member of the Moscow Committee of Graphic Artists, Photography Section.

1979
Dramatic increase in sales of Adams prints in public auctions and through photography dealers, leading to a significant expansion of interest in collecting fine-art photography.  Adams prints account for some half of the total dollar value of photography sales in the United States during the year.  Major retrospective exhibition, Ansel Adams and the West, held at the Museum of Modern Art.  Subject of Time Magazine cover story.  Publishes Yosemite and the Range of Light (NYGS); eventual sales total more than 200,000 copies in hard and soft-cover editions.  Founding member and vice president of the Board of Trustees, the Big Sur Foundation.  Lectures in Carmel, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, and Minneapolis.  Begins writing his autobiography with Mary Alinder, who is employed as his executive assistant.  John Sexton becomes photographic assistant through 1982.

1980
Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Carter.  Receives the first Ansel Adams Award for Conservation given by The Wilderness Society.  Publishes The New Ansel Adams Photography Series Book I, The Camera (NYGS).  Exhibition, Ansel Adams: Photographs of the American West, organized by The Friends of Photography for the USICA and circulated through 1983 in India, the Middle East, and Africa.

1981
Receives honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Harvard University.  King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden presents him with second Hasselblad Gold Medal Award.  Named Honored Photographer at the national meeting of the Society for Photographic Education.  Holds final workshop in Yosemite, then transfers workshop location to the Carmel area under the administration of The Friends of Photography.  Publishes Book 2 in his revised technical series, The Negative (NYGS) and three large posters, the first of a series (NYGS).  Hour-long biographic film, Ansel Adams: Photographer, co-produced by Andrea Gray and John Huszar for FilmAmerica.  Mural-size print of Moonrise, Hernandes, New Mexico is sold for $71,500, a record high for a creative photograph.

1982
Celebrates eightieth birthday with a black-tie dinner sponsored by The Friends of Photography for more than 200 guests, during which he is presented the Decoration of Commander in the Order of the Arts and Letters, the highest cultural award given by the French government to a foreigner.  Two exhibitions, The Unknown Ansel Adams and The Eightieth Birthday Retrospective, honor the event at the Friends Gallery and the Monterey Museum of Art, respectively.  Pianist Valdimir Ashkenazy plays a concert for him in his Carmel Highlands home.  Receives honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Mills College.  His 1936 Stieglitz gallery exhibition is recreated and circulated by the Center for Creative Photography as Ansel Adams at An American Place.  Chris Rainier becomes photographic assistant until 1985.

1983
Publishes Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs; Book 3 of the technical series, The Print; three posters; and a 1984 calendar (all NYGS).  Subject of an extensive interview in Playboy magazine.  Meets with President Reagan on environmental concerns.  Elected as an honorary member in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.  Exhibition, Ansel Adams: Photographer, is organized by The Friends of Photography as a cultural exchange between the sister cities of San Francisco and Shanghai, China.  Exhibition also travels to Bejing, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.  Ansel Adams Day proclaimed by the California State Legislature.

1984
Dies April 22 of heart failure.  Major stories appear on all major television networks and on the front page of most newspapers nationwide.  A commemorative exhibition and memorial celebration are held in Carmel.  California Senators Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson sponsor legislation to create an Ansel Adams Wilderness Area of more than 100,000 acres between Yosemite National Park and the John Muir Wilderness Area.  Unanimously elected as an honoree of the International Photography Hall of Fame.  Three posters and a calendar are published (NYGS).  Ansel Adams 1902-1984 published by The Friends of Photography.

1985
Mount Ansel Adams, a 11,760-foot peak located at the head of the Lyell Fork of the Merced River on the southeast boundary of Yosemite National Park, officially named on the first anniversary of his death.  Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (with Mary Street Alinder) published in October (NYGS).  The autobiography is enthusiastically received and reaches many best-seller lists, including number seven on the New York Times list.  Three posters and a calendar are also published.  Exhibition, Ansel Adams: Classic Images, which drew some 6,000 viewers a day, shown at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.