Ansel Adams: The National Parks Service Photographs

by William A. Turnage, Ansel Adams, Andrea G. Stillman

Book Overview

The invitation to photograph the nation's parklands was the perfect assignment for Adams, as it allowed him to express his deepest convictions as artist, conservationist, and citizen. These stunning photographs of the natural geysers and terraces in Yellowstone, the rocks and ravines in the Grand Canyon, the winding rivers and majestic mountains in Glacier and Grand Teton national parks, the mysterious Carlsbad Caverns, the architecture of ancient...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789207753
• ISBN13: 9780789207753
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.2" x 4.7"

Customer Reviews

Miniature book for a big price

Very disappointed in the book. It’s tiny and the photos are partially on the facing page. Terrible. Don’t buy.

Too Small

Ansel Adams was an extraordinary photographer but this book is so tiny that it does not give his work justice. I should have researched the details better (for dimensions, ratings, etc.) because I would not have ordered it. The size does not capture the grandeur that his work inspires. I am giving this rating 2 stars because it is Ansel Adams. Otherwise, for the book’s effectiveness, I would have applied 1 star.

Early Work by a Genius

While small in stature, this black and white photographic adventure packs a huge punch. Here you will find beautiful and sometimes stoic images in various locals including Utah, Montana and California. I met Ansel Adams when I was a child having grown up in Yosemite and been exposed to his work for decades. This is a unique book of rarely seen work that he was commissioned by the government to undertake. I recommend heartily!

Beautiful photos !

I loved the beautiful photos from our National Parks and the information on the incredible Ansel Adams.

Not at all what I expected

This book is tiny: 4.5”x4.25”x1”. Too small to appreciate the beautiful photos inside. I didn’t know this when purchasing.

This is a "tiny folio."

This is not a full-size booked. This is about 4 in by 4 in. I did not know this when I bought it.

Our National Parks, Ansel Adams

A fine introduction to the National Parks, perhaps encouraging the reader to visit parks, or to look for additional resources to view.

Adams the wilderness champion; illustrated.

Most people know Ansel Adams' iconic photographs of gorgeous natural scenery in US national parks. But Adams' passion for national parks went farther than documentation. He was also a forceful advocate who spoke and wrote in defense of preserving wilderness in national parks. This small gem pulls together familiar Adams images of national parks with his writing, both formal and informal, on national parks especially his most beloved Yosemite. Adams' most significant contribution to conservation was popularizing the concept of wilderness as spiritual retreat; a concept that demands we protect wilderness from too much human use, too much human carelessness, and even too much human love. This is where this book offers something enlightening and became more than just another pretty compilation of Adams' photos. The images illustrate the places his words seek to describe, defend, and protect within the historical context of the national parks system formation and development at critical junctures. The images are smaller scale than we are used to seeing them; however, they are sharp high-quality reproductions. This is not a comprehensive treatment of Adams' views or a complete compilation of his writing. The selections in this book introduce his views to new readers and remind those, like me, who may have overlooked it that Adams was a serious conservationist.

A Brilliant Book Marred by a Too-Small Page Size

Ansel Adams was our photographer-advocate laureate of the national parks. This outstandng volume combines a look at his efforts both to capture the meaning of the parks and to lobby on their behalf. Fortified with a Guggenheim Fellowship in the 1940s, Adams was able to travel throughout the U.S. to visit the many national parks outside of his beloved, native California. This volume greatly benefits from those travels in creating his ideas and the 80 black and white images contained in it. As Ansel Adams reminds us, "The National Parks, are, indeed a phenomena of an advanced society . . . ." When Yellowstone was established by President Grant in 1872, it was the first national park in the history of the world. Since then, we have been in a race between despoiling our wilderness environment and retaining some of it in national parks. The challenge is heightened by the pressures to commercialize and increase access to wilderness areas. How many people should visit Yosemite each year? These are the questions that Ansel Adams anticipated and helped us address. These questions are even more relevant and important today than when he first raised them. "Possessions, both material and spiritual, are appreciated most when we find ourselves in peril of losing them." "There is a constant erosion of the concept and the reality of wilderness." Unfortunately, Adams was much more successful as a photographer than in achieving his environmental vision. Will his final epitaph of the future be of someone who captured images of what does not exist any more? I certainly hope not. I recommend the preface by William A. Turnage very highly to understand Ansel Adams' vision and its effects on our society. The preface also contains a delightful section by Nancy Newhall on what it was like to be Ansel Adams' assistant for his dawn photography treks. This book contains much more written material by Ansel Adams on conservation and the national parks than in any other book of his photographs that I have seen. I enjoyed reading about his ideas, and they helped me understand his photography better as well. He is trying to show us "the clear realities of Nature seen with the inner eye of the spirit [to] reveal the ultimate echo of God." As I mentioned in the title to this review, the publisher put these images on pages that are too small to capture the detail of Adams' work in most cases. In fairness to the publisher, I should also point out that remarkable efforts have been made to reproduce these images well in the small format. Compared to other small reproductions of these same images, these are by far the best I have seen.Some compositions in fact succeed in overcoming the limitations of the page size. These include:Cliff Palace Ruin, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 1941Leaves, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, 1942Forest, Early Morning, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, 1949Leaf, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 1948Forest, Bear

Perfect Gift!

This book is really beautiful. The pictures have been really well selected. I think this book would make a perfect gift for almost anyone, since it has pictures from all over the United States.