Ansel Adams: Landscapes of the American West

Disappointed is what I most feel about this huge (17 X 14.2 inches--224 pages) formatted coffee table book. My reaction surprises me because I'm a big fan of Ansel Adams and even attended one of the great photographer's workshops in Carmel, CA. The paper used to print this book simply didn't seem to capture the quality of an Ansel Adams black and white photograph. While the book was well laid out in six different categories--"Sky, Rock, Water, Structure, Plant and Life," unfortunately, there weren't that many really drop-dead images included in the 120 photographs taken mostly during the 1930's and 1940's. The images didn't sing. In many cases they seemed monotonous and boring. As would be expected in a book of National Park Landscapes, there weren't many photographs of people--even though a couple of the ones that included humans were among the most interesting. Perhaps the missing quality is due to the fact that most of the original negatives were lost? The books reproductions were made mostly from a set of signed exhibition prints he denoted to the Interior Department and these were later transferred to the National Achieves in Maryland. The original plan had called for many of them to be reproduced as murals. To me, the single most interesting picture in the book was the closing picture that showed Indians preparing for a dance and was entitled "Dance, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, 1938." The inclusion of that picture screamed out for more from that particular series, but alas, none were included. The picture story of the Manzanar War Relocation Center where Japanese Americans were confined after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor is historically significant but the pictures weren't all that interesting in and of themselves and Adams probably classified them as some of his "without work" meaning commercial assignments and not "within work" or his own personal creative work. Adams believed that a dozen good images was a worthwhile production for a single year. This book has about a one-year's worth of good images. I awarded the book four stars, because I love Ansel Adams and what he did to promote wilderness conservation through his photographic work. I also collect his work and he gave me a signed print while I was attending his workshop so I'm definitely prejudiced in his favor. This is a must for any serious collector of the work of Ansel Adams, but it is definitely not the best book if the collector is only going to buy the one or two best such books. So, let the buyer of this book not be disappointed. There is worthwhile material included in it, but only a few of his most famous images. Most of those icons are missing from this collection. The entire book is beautifully laid out and weighs 8.5 pounds. It's just that some of the pictures seem so trite compared to his most loved works. Fortunately the book was printed in a very large printing run to keep the unit price low so that it is not too expensive for such a Sumo-sized bo