Ansel Adams (16 page)

In contrast, Willard remembered that he proposed “U.S. 256,” the old system name for
f
.64 in the new aperture-marking system. He said that Ansel responded, “U.S. 256 is not good, it sounds like a highway.” Willard continued, “He then took a pencil and made a curving ‘
f
’ followed by the dot and 64. The graphics were beautiful and that was that.”
36
At first, it was written “Group
f
.64,” in the style of the old aperture notation, but that was soon updated to the new notation with its slash, “Group
f
/64.” To those familiar with Ansel’s handwriting, the
f
in the Group f/64 exhibition invitation appears nearly identical to his own typical, very musical-looking
f
.
37

The core group of six photographers decided to invite a few other like minds to join them for the duration of the exhibition, first anointing San Francisco businessman and amateur photographer Henry Swift (who collected prints by some of the others) as a full partner. Edward suggested a small list of names, including Consuelo Kanaga and Alma Lavenson.
38
Kanaga, a photojournalist who had found a sponsor in Albert Bender, had made a strong series of portraits of African Americans.
39
Bender was also a family friend of Lavenson, whom he had introduced to Kanaga, Weston, and Cunningham, her strongest influence. Lavenson had made a number of graphic compositions of the industrial port of Oakland, a quite suitable
f.
64 choice.
40

In the end, Kanaga, Lavenson, Weston’s son Brett, and Preston Holder were also invited to participate, as associates, not full members, bringing the total to eleven photographers: seven members and four guests. Although just twenty-one years old, Brett Weston had studied photography with his father for seven years and was already clearly accomplished. The weak photographic link was Holder, who made up for his inexperience by pairing his images with his original poems, as well as with his ebullient personality.
41

Partly because he was the only member living in San Francisco, in fact quite close to the de Young, and also due to his high energy, Ansel played a central role in organizing the exhibition itself. His account of cash receipts is recorded in Virginia’s neat hand under the date December 2, 1932, crediting Weston, Cunningham, Edwards, Swift, and Van Dyke with contributing ten dollars each to the Group
f.
64 deposit.
42
(Weston pleaded that Noskowiak be allowed participation without paying her share because he could not spare another ten dollars.) Assuming that the honorable Ansel himself also anted up, six of the full members seem to have shared equally in the expenses, putting up money in service to their cause. Ansel was also responsible for seeing to the exhibition announcements.

Historically, most avant-garde movements in modern art, including Surrealism, Futurism, and Dadaism, proclaimed themselves with manifestos. So, too, did Group
f.
64, whose creed was actually nailed to the de Young’s gallery walls
43
:

The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group . . . The Group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.
44

Although its content was surely ratified to some extent by the others, the one-page statement was probably written by Ansel and Willard. The type used to print the one existing original draft seems to match that on both Ansel’s and Willard’s contemporaneous typewriters. One small, though critical, style element is different: the manifesto has one and a half spaces between lines and either one or two spaces after each period. These peculiarities are completely consistent with documents produced by Ansel. For his part, Willard invariably used either single or double spaces between lines and always left two spaces at the end of his sentences.

Moreover, a copy of the manifesto has been found with corrections in Ansel’s hand that were incorporated into the final draft.
45
This version contains a number of mistakes that have been x’d out, a frequent Ansel practice. Willard appears to have been a better typist, rarely making mistakes and, when he did, almost never using x’s to cross them out. But perhaps this is evidence of Ansel’s edit of Willard’s draft.

The manifesto capitalized a number of nouns not normally treated to such emphasis, an affectation Ansel had picked up from his reading of Carpenter, whose influence may also be seen in Ansel’s British spelling of such words as
technic
(for
technique
), also adopted by Willard.
46
The
F
in “Group F.64” is capitalized in the manifesto (although not in the invitation), whereas in letters from this period, Willard consistently used a lowercase
f
, for “
f
/64.” How Group
f
.64 was written seems to have been elastic—at times F/64, Group F.64, Group
f
/64, but most usually Group
f
.64.

In a 1955 group interview with Imogen and Dorothea Lange, Ansel was asked, “Who thought [Group
f.
64] up and gave it the name?” He responded, “It’s usually mixed up, and I think it ought to be cleared up. I remember as early as 1930 trying to get a group together who would function with straight prints . . . I motivated it, Willard Van Dyke clarified it, Edward Weston subscribed to it.”
47
When Imogen was asked who had drafted the manifesto, she said, “Ask Ansel. He must have written it. Nobody else would.” Although at another time she swore it had been Willard.
48

The Group
f
.64 manifesto was a declaration of war on the photographic infidels: the Pictorialists. During a 1983 interview with Ansel, Willard Van Dyke, and the historian Beaumont Newhall, I asked Willard why Group
f.
64 had been formed.
49
He answered, “We had agreed to do our own thing and were surprised at the reaction by the Pictorialists and [William] Mortensen to what we were doing. We didn’t have a sense of gospelizing.”

At that point Ansel interjected, “I did! I had a sense of mission. A simple, straight print is one of the most beautiful expressions possible.”

Willard then added, “We were reacting against bad taste. Not all Pictorialists were [bad], but Mortensen . . . was—his work was disgusting.”

William Mortensen was the outspoken leader of the opposition and the symbol of everything that Group
f.
64 opposed. Even though they themselves had started out as Pictorialists, Imogen, Edward, and Ansel believed they had evolved into a higher species, photographically speaking. The influential Mortensen taught, published numerous books on technique, and wrote for photographic magazines. Many of his own photographs were dramatizations of historical persons or fictional themes; he depicted Cinderella, for example, as a naked, well-endowed lass perched coyly with crossed legs, dangling her glass slipper from her hand.

For Ansel, the Group “confirmed my own ideas—seeing other work and ‘seeing’ for the first time. I finally enjoyed and understood Edward Weston. The vibrations of the group increased my understanding and gave me confidence.”
50
Willard recalled that as the youngest member, he found it “tremendously satisfying to come to Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and discuss prints—have them give [my work] serious consideration. Then Imogen Cunningham would make a wisecrack that would pare it right down.”
51

Group
f.
64 was formed not merely in reaction to the Pictorialists, but as a response to the challenge everywhere posed by modern art, as painters, graphic artists, and a handful of Eastern photographers, among them Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, moved beyond Pictorialism and struck out on their own.
52
Group
f.
64 was an expression of modern art in photography, its aim to marry everyday subject matter to a clear, sharp camera vision rather than to the precise edges of line in painting.

Group
f.
64 had two commandments. The first of these held that there was but one God, and its manifestation was detail. The photographic lens could capture minutiae better than any other art form, begging the question, If God dwells in the details, are photographs our best window on God? Ansel would say yes.

The second commandment admonished, thou shalt not covet any other art by imposing its presence on photography. The last sentence of the manifesto is crucial to an understanding of this second commandment. “Pure” photography did not mean there could be no manipulation whatsoever; some intervention was allowed, even expected, in making negatives and prints, provided that it conformed to a prescribed list of techniques that were judged to be photographic in nature.

A choice of lens, for example, could be used to alter spatial relations and relative scale, but the soft-focus lens was verboten because it obscured detail and thus violated the first commandment. The tonal contrast of the negative could be enhanced or diminished by different combinations of exposure and development, a concept that would later become the basis of Ansel’s famed Zone System. Dodging and burning during the printing of the image were permitted to subtly lighten or darken local areas of the photograph.

Filters altered tonal relationships. If the filter’s effect was relatively mild—that is, if it did not serve to transform the scene into a new reality—it was deemed acceptable. According to Group
f.
64 member John Paul Edwards, “K1 and K2 color filters provide an ample range of color correction for nearly all subjects.”
53
The key word here is
ample
; Edwards clearly believed that excursions further afield, into more dramatic filter effects, were beyond the limits of permissible behavior for the photographic purists of Group
f.
64.

Clouds can be separated from their blue backgrounds by means of yellow “K” filters that also reduce atmospheric haze. When a red filter is placed in front of the camera lens, as Ansel did in the case of
Monolith
, pale skies become intensely black. The use of a blue filter creates the opposite effect, yielding a white sky bleached of all detail. Light- and medium-yellow filters were considered kosher in
f.
64; red and blue filters were not.
54

In their landmark de Young show, six of the original gang of seven exhibited nine prints each, Ansel showed ten, and the four invitees, four. Everyone placed a price of ten dollars on each photograph, with the exception of Edward, who asked fifteen. Attempting to show that he could do it all, Ansel selected three portraits, three details, one architectural study, and three landscapes, a bravura display.

Ansel evidently considered
f.
64 to be a state of mind, not an unbreakable doctrine. It is unlikely that any of his ten photographs in this exhibit, or very many in his whole lifetime, were actually made with the aperture set at
f.
64; research has in fact uncovered only a small handful of images by him documented as having been exposed at that setting, whose tiny size requires an extremely long exposure.
55

Three of Ansel’s images from this first Group
f.
64 exhibition are more important than the other seven.
Nevada Fall, Yosemite Valley
is a direct expression of the Group
f.
64 practice of filling the picture space with the object itself. Ansel had been doing this for years, but his earlier photographs of waterfalls were static compositions.
56
In this image, Nevada Fall cascades powerfully out of the picture plane and right at the viewer. At one time, Ansel judged this his best landscape photograph.
57