Ansel Adams archive

This collection has arrived at the Center in various accession lots since 1976. Master prints by Adams and master prints in his personal photography collection were stored in the Center's master print collection. Assistants at Adams’ studio arranged some series, such as the correspondence, before being sent here. While its alphabetical arrangement was retained, the entire correspondence series was examined and some re-filing was done to assure consistency and uniform access points for the numerous personal and corporate headings. Original order was observed while arranging the collection, however, much sorting and filing within the collection was necessary. The majority of the series and subseries headings were imposed upon the collection by the processors.

In conjunction with this inventory, users are cautioned to examine the guide to the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Collection because, as biographer to Adams, Nancy Newhall had access to Adams' papers and no doubt had some of them in her New Mexico home at the time of her death. Note also that before this present arrangement was completed in 1984-85, several volunteers and staff members did some sorting and interfiling of newly received materials into the collection.

This collection was ultimately processed with grant funds from the United States Department of Education.

Although Adams claimed that he never planned on becoming an institution, the papers and photographic materials in his archive serve as a solid and fundamental basis for any serious study of the aesthetic and educational aspects of his career. Fortunately, Adams kept a considerable amount of his incoming correspondence with his fellow photographers and patrons from the mid-30s onward. Unfortunately, many documents which might have provided a more introspective and complete record of his life and times as a photographer - diaries, appointment books, speeches -either were not kept or are not evident in this collection. Adams eschewed the tedious rigors of dating things (one letter was dated in red ink "whothehellcareswhatdayitis -itsnow"); perhaps he was confident that his friends, historians Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, or editors, Mary Alinder and Andrea Stillman, would prove detectives par excellence for the verification of dates for important photographs and letters. Nevertheless, Adams did preserve a wealth of personal and professional information. His autobiography avoided a straight chronological recapitulation of events, instead, he opted for a recollection of his "varieties of experience" culled from his memory. He continues, "When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence." The first photograph in the autobiography is his "Self Portrait, Monument Valley, Utah, 1958."

By any account, Adams must be judged a generous man. He struggled to promote photography in academies and museums on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. He dedicated his considerable political and artistic skills to the conservation of the wilderness. He donated his expansive home in Carmel to underwrite future operations of the Friends of Photography. Finally, he has shared with the world his personal papers, letters, manuscripts, and photographs, which provide tangible witness and accounting of the currents that have moved photography to its place in the late twentieth-century American milieu. Adams lived a full eighty-two years. His legacy will be more fully realized in the coming decades; his spirit will serve as example and encouragement to future generations.

In a major way, the donation and purchase of this archive established the Center for Creative Photography. After an exhibition of his prints at the University of Arizona's Museum of Art in 1973, Adams began a dialogue with its president, John P. Schaefer, from which the reality of the Center emerged.