Sublime, Banal, Commercial and Artistic: Photography in the West

Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley, 1942 

This week’s discussion revolved around the readings “Yosemite and Ansel Adams: Art, Commerce, and Western Tourism” by Jonathan Spaulding, “The Sublime and the Banal in Postwar Photography of the American West” by Cécile Whiting, and “In the Twentieth Century West” by Robert Adams. 

When you hear the words landscape photography the name Ansel Adams probably comes to mind. When you hear the words Ansel Adams the words Yosemite National Park may also come to mind. Ansel Adams had a deep connection to the National Park from a young age. After fighting an illness his aunt wanted to lift his spirits by giving him a book by James M. Hutching titled, In the Heart of the Sierras. The book inspired young Ansel Adams to urge his family to take their summer vacation to Yosemite National Park. That summer would have an enormous impact on Adams that would carry over into the rest of his life and career. Adams began working at the National Park and began his photography career. Donald Tressider hired Adams in hopes he would be able to capture the beauty of Yosemite to spark tourism. As time progressed Tressider became less worried about the beautiful landscape and focused more on making money off tourists. 

Ansel Adams photographing Yosemite National Park

After Ansel Adams did some side photography commissions he returned to Yosemite. He discovered that Tressider and the Curry Company were using his photographs without his permission, and also that Life magazine did this as well, without giving him part of their earnings. Ansel Adams was conflicted after this incident, he wanted to start publishing his own works but the Curry Company was his only form of constant income. After this incident though, he had the ability to take photographs for a few other employers like the Kodak company. Adams wanted his photographs of Yosemite and nature to convey a sense of beauty, but also found himself on the opposite end of the commercialism spectrum with his photographs being used in advertisements. He viewed it as another form of his love for the natural world. However, he always felt the pressure of needing to choose sides between the environmental movement and the tourism business. When he finally became a big name in the art and photography business, he realized that books were a highly effective form of communicating preservationism with tourists in the national parks. This led to high reviews and impressive sales for Adams. Although, this at the same time contradicted with his preservationist values. 

William Garnett, Housing Developments/Aerial Photos, 1940s/50s

Alongside Ansel Adams, William Garnett, Ed Ruscha, and Robert Adams were important western landscape photographers from the 1960s. Each photographer had his own aesthetic, either capturing only the beauty of the western scenery, focusing on the harmful impact westward expansion and tourism have on the land, or contrasting the two aesthetics in one image. The concept of banal or sublime photography becomes important to these photographers in their work, meaning the images seem to fit somewhere on a spectrum of being boring or magnificent. 

Robert Adams, Pioneer Cemetery, Near Empire, c. 1974
 
Discussing Robert Adams in particular, the encompassment of sublime and banal settings as his primary subject material truly highlighted the feelings of both himself and other photographers with similar viewpoints at the time. Adams always desired to capture natural spaces in their raw form, untouched and magnificent. As time went on, these images became exceedingly more difficult to attain as human interaction was inevitable in a growing capitalistic society. Adams instilled that not only were developers and the tourism industry making these untouched lands ugly, but they were also destroying places where individuals grew to become themselves...places that shared the spirit of those that had once inhabited it. This corruption not only affected the land, but those that grew to love it. In many instances, person and place can be bound together through memory, experience, and association. By ruining one, another is affected. Everyone depends on space, even without realizing it. Space creates an element of civility, and highlights the true beauty in simplicity of the world itself. Adams desired to create a place that could remain untouched, even as it was surrounded by development..a place that maintained the original tranquility of the land and harmony of nature. This is something that he wanted to share with audiences. His work primarily focused on opening a dialogue with viewers about preservation of these areas, urging individuals to become better than they once were and to gradually improve. By reshaping oneself, he stated that our individual transformation can reflect a greater catalyst for change in natural spaces.

Ed Ruscha's Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, 1962

In the discussion, we talked about the concept of working on projects we may not agree with in order to pay the bills and whether that is considered selling out in the art world or not. We also discussed the process of photo manipulation and how that is considered an artistic advantage to show the viewer what the artist wants them to see which lead into the question of at what point does photo manipulation become misleading to the viewer. Can anything be completely natural when there is a lot of darkroom manipulation in photography studios? Looking at Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations, we discussed how the blank pages seemed to be sporadic and accidental at first, but with further discussion, we theorized that this may not have been unintentional but possibly alluding to the vast nothingness seen on any long-distance drive and the implied movement between gas stations. The growing blank pages at the end gives a sense of fear that gas will run out at any minute and another gas station may not be in sight before that time comes with this interpretation. 

 Alix Peters, Megan Hall, Carrie Pawlovich, and Celina Timmerman