Columbia museum features work of legendary photographer Adams

"Chance favors the prepared mind!" was a favorite motto of Ansel Adams.

Perhaps the most popular nature photographer of the 20th century, Adams was famous for his ability to take advantage of circumstance - the moon appearing at just the right angle over a craggy peak or storm clouds parting momentarily to cast a splinter of light on the scene below. Yet most of his biographers agree that he was so acutely aware of his surroundings that he anticipated and prepared for these opportunities; his knowledge of the Western landscape was so intimate that he could take advantage of those seemingly random juxtapositions and unexpected atmospheric conditions that might have taken other less cognizant photographers by surprise.

Until Jan. 17, area residents have a chance to do some planning of their own as they schedule a trip to the Columbia Museum of Art to see what Adams regarded as the best of his now iconic images. "Ansel Adams: Masterworks" features nearly 50 photographs hand-selected by the artist not long before his death in 1984. These works on loan from the Turtle Bay Exploration Center in Redding, Calif., represent every category of his work - from portraits to landscapes - and span the full range of his long career.

Born in San Francisco in 1902, Adams took his first photograph at age 14 with a Brownie box camera. What inspired this novice effort on his part was his first trip to Yosemite Valley and his initial confrontation with the awe-inspiring landscapes of the American West.

Adams published his first book of photographs in 1935, and for five decades thereafter, he made it possible for countless people around the globe to see the wilderness settings of California and New Mexico through his eyes. In fact, today some of his vantage points in the majestic Sierra Nevada are marked with signposts so that others can stand where he stood and survey the scene as he did.

In addition to the innumerable admirers of his subject matter, there are generations of photographers who have read all or some of the 10 books he wrote about the technical aspects of photography; he is credited, for example, with inventing the "zone system" for manipulating lens exposure and regulating the developing process.

Those familiar with Adams' work already know about his fascination with form and texture and how he could make an abstract composition out of the simple elements of nature. A famous example of this effect would be the 1958 photo entitled "Aspens, Northern New Mexico" wherein the foreground trees seem to glow almost from within, their luminosity accentuated by the fact that Adams has framed them against a thick stand of trees whose white trunks take on receding tones of gray in the deepening shadows and the darkness beyond.

What I found most interesting in the current show, however, were those images that sprang from some emotional investment on the part of the artist. Consider his now-familiar image entitled "Mount Williamson, The Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California." Taken in 1945, this photograph, whose upper third features a mountain peak crowned by clouds pierced with sunlight and whose foreground is a sea of boulders, takes on new meaning when one realizes that Adams was on assignment at the time to film the federal internment camp at Manzanar. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, around 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese ancestry were uprooted from their daily lives and isolated from the general population, confined to one of 10 detention camps where they lived under rather primitive conditions for up to three years, roughly from 1942 to 1945.

Adams was distressed by their plight, but he hoped that "the enormous backdrop of the Sierra Nevada to the west and the high desert ranges gave the nature-loving Japanese Americans a certain respite from their mood of isolation and concern for the future." The photograph in question captures both aspects of their situation; the rock-strewn foreground is emblematic of the hard, heavy reality of their present lot, but the sun-streaked horizon may, Adams conjectured, inspire hope for a better day.

Located at 1515 Main St., the Columbia Museum of Art is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, call (803) 799-2810 or visit www.columbiamuseum.org.

A Carolina Trustee Professor, Dr. Mack holds the G.L. Toole Chair at USC Aiken.