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There is a consensus among photo experts: Ansel Adams was a brilliant landscape photographer and his contributions to art photography are significant and numerous.
His landscape photos are majestic, breathtaking. Adams (1902-84) had a keen and evocative eye, an understanding of how to create narratives through still life.
He also was a master technician in the field and darkroom. The sharpness in his gelatin prints revealed delicate subtleties.
"Ansel Adams: Masterworks" at the Columbia Museum of Art is an exhibition that will resonate with viewers and bring landscapes to life.
The appeal of the show is twofold: Everybody can see beauty in landscapes and everybody knows what it's like to take a photo.
It took a technical and scientific mastery of the camera and lens for Adams to create the dramatic and enduring images from such places as Yosemite National Park.
His process, pre-visualization, unified his eye and technique.
In "Monolith, Face of Half Dome," a mountain face in Yosemite is shrouded in sunlight and shadow. The photo, taken in 1927, was one of Adams' first to use pre-visualization.
The granite mountainside is revealed as a face with a history longer than humanity will ever experience. He exposed the personality of mountains and edifices.
"He realized what the camera sees and what we see," said Todd Herman, chief curator at the museum of art. "And that's two completely different things."
All, perhaps, equally important.
