ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — They are photos Ansel Adams never intended anyone to see — tiny proofs taken with a handheld camera of a landscape that lacks the grandeur captured in his portraits of the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite National Park.
But thanks to some connections and a quirk of inheritance law, and over the objections of the trust that controls use of Adams’ work, the few dozen 5-inch-square proofs are now on display at a small museum not far from the inland waterway where Adams shot the pictures in 1940.
“Adams’ prints are perfection,” exhibit curator Stephen Jareckie said. “But these proofs have a certain vitality that you don’t find in a finished print. It gives them an educational point of view and shows the public what Adams’ work is like at that stage — a work in progress.” The proofs — taken with a Zeiss Super Ikonta BX handheld camera, instead of a larger view camera mounted on a tripod that Adams typically used — were shot as Adams and a friend, David McAlpin Hunter, traveled the Intracoastal Waterway in November 1940 from Virginia to Georgia.
The exhibit of 50 photos, about 30 of which are credited to Adams, were on exhibit in December at the Museum of the Albemarle. “Ansel Adams in the East: Cruising the Inland Waterway in 1940” was also exhibited at the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts.
Jareckie came across the proofs in the estate of McAlpin’s second wife. McAlpin and Adams worked together on founding the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where McAlpin was a trustee. Jareckie also curated a 2003 exhibit at the Fitchburg museum of proofs from a 1937 camping trip Adams took with McAlpin and their mutual friend, artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
The trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust in Mill Valley, Calif., believe that Jareckie is taking advantage of Adams’ fame. While they can keep the images from being reproduced, they are powerless to stop an exhibition.
Such exhibits show what are basically snapshots, “not works he ever would have shown in a museum,” says William Turnage, one of three Adams’ trustees. “I think it’s unethical in terms of museum ethics and behavior. It’s something that never would be done at MoMA or the Art Institute of Chicago.
“But you know, what the heck? Some people are going to take advantage and try to profiteer, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Adams, who also trained as a concert pianist, compared proofs to the score and a finished print to the performance. His biographer, Mary Alinder, said the photographer would never have authorized the exhibit.
“His complete art was not only the making of the negative but also his own interpretation of the negative into a print,” she said.
But Alinder said the proofs are an important part of the historical record, documenting a time in Adams’ life as well as the importance of his friendship with McAlpin and their joint appreciation of photography as an art form.
“My point would be that it should clearly be stated that these are proofs,” she said. “They could be night and day from what Ansel would have interpreted.” The photos show the two friends on vacation as they travel 580 miles, starting in Norfolk, Va. Their boat, a 42-foot schooner called the Billy Bones II, took them along the Elizabeth River, through Deep Creek Lock to the Great Dismal Swamp and the Pasquotank River. They passed Cape Lookout on their way to Georgetown and Charleston, S.C., and on to Thunderbolt, Ga.
The enclosed space of the Intracoastal Waterway is nothing like the expansive landscapes of the West for which Adams is known.
“Wonder if he knew he would be taking pictures in a closet?” said Don Pendergraft, exhibit design chief at the Museum of the Albemarle.
Among the proofs, seven of which are attributed to McAlpin, are photos of Adams on the mast of the Billy Bones II and standing on the front of the schooner. In both, he looks as if he’s seeking a wider angle of the flat landscape. But there are also signs of experimentation, as with an abstract photo of the lock wash at South Mills Lock in North Carolina.
“The more we find out about artists, the better perception we have of their life,” Pendergraft said. “This gives us a better feel for Ansel Adams and some of his travels through the country that we didn’t realize he had been in. It fills in some of the blanks and will give the visitor here a whole new perception of who he was and how he took photographs.” ——— On the Net: Museum of the Albemarle:
