The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature’s exhibit Sharing the Light: Ansel Adams and Alan Ross, opens Saturday, Sept. 25 in the museum’s main gallery, 1511-B Mission Drive, Solvang.
The exhibition will explore the American West through the lenses of both Adams and Ross, and includes selections from Ross’ international photography projects. The Wildling Museum’s display will mark the first institutional show dedicated to the two photographers’ works.
Sharing the Light highlights the careers of both Adams and Ross, who were close friends and colleagues. Ross, who served as Adams’ longtime assistant, later became an internationally acclaimed photographer in his own right.
The show will provide insight into the two artists’ respective connections to nature, and technical and artistic mastery of photography.
“This will be the first time Ansel and I have been exhibited together in a museum,” said Ross. “Ansel and his work have been such a huge part of my life for the last 48 years; it is indeed a very wonderful feeling to be sharing the same wall-space in a museum, especially a museum so dedicated to the environment.”
Ross continues to work as the exclusive printer of the Ansel Adams Yosemite Special Edition negatives, an assignment Adams personally selected him for in 1975. Ross produces individual prints by hand from Adams’ original negatives using traditional darkroom techniques.
The Wildling exhibition will also include Ross’ personal insights into working alongside the legendary Adams.
“Always intertwined with the work was (Adams’) sense of mirth — terrible jokes and puns, often told for the sixth or seventh time, which never failed to give rise to his own infectious and mountainous laugh, eliciting groans and grins from all within range,” Ross said of Adams.
“I don’t believe I ever saw him gloomy or morose, and the rare instances of anger were matters of principle — personal integrity, the environment and politics,” Ross said. “He took himself and his work seriously but had, and never lost, an ability to laugh at himself. What a wonderful man to be around — never a dull moment, never a gloomy day.”
Adams was recognized during his lifetime for his iconic landscape photography and lifelong wilderness conservation advocacy. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
For more information and to follow programming updates throughout the exhibition, visit www.wildlingmuseum.org/news/sharing-the-light-ansel-adams-and-alan-ross.
Ansel Adams (1902-84) is among the 20th century’s most notable photographers. He rose to prominence as a landscape photographer of the American West and is best known for his iconic black and white images of Yosemite National Park.
Adams co-founded Group f/64 with Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, an association of photographers dedicated to elevating photography to a fine art at a time when photography was strictly considered a form of documentation.
Adams later developed the Zone System technique with fellow photographer Fred Archer, a method of photographic exposure and development dedicated to a deep technical understanding of tonal range, which resulted in photographic prints marked by clarity and depth, elements for which Adams’ work is perhaps best known.
Throughout his career, Adams used his photography to promote wilderness conservation and worked as an active environmentalist. His advocacy aided the expansion of the U.S. National Park system and his environmental work was recognized by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 when he awarded Adams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Adams’ works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K.
Alan Ross (b. 1948) is a renowned photographer whose vision combines traditional photographic methods with today’s technology. He is best known for his tonally exquisite black-and-white photographs of the American West. He worked side-by-side with Adams as his photographic assistant, and was personally selected by Adams to print his Yosemite Special Edition negatives, a role he has maintained since 1975.
Ross lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he pursues his own photography, teaches one-on-one workshops in the art of seeing and master printing, and writes articles and blogs sharing his knowledge of the art and craft of photography.
Ross’ works are in the permanent collections of Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey; and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
For more about the Wildling Museum, and to volunteer or join as a member, visit www.wildlingmuseum.org.