Ansel Adams: Landscapes of the American West

Ansel Adams was a legendary photographer. He mainly shot landscapes, specifically large-scale American landscapes, and his photographs are often breathtaking. This book collects a number of the photographs he took of America’s national parks – real wilderness stuff. Now, it’s hard to photograph a mountain and convince the viewer that it isn’t just a rock in close-up. But Adams does, because he was a superb technical photographer who could calculate how to best to get near perfect resolution for his photographs in all situations. So when he photographs a mountain, the sheer detail that he captures convinces the viewing eye that this can only be an object on a massive scale.

The photographs here are grouped into categories though, so when one great mountain shot follows another and another it detracts from the viewer’s experience. The text that accompanies these shots is another problem. There are many fascinating shots documenting the life of Japanese Americans confined to the Manzanar Relocation Centre, but the accompanying blurb does little to expand upon them. It’s a book full of great images, but the writing in it is hardly up to the rigorous standards Adams set for his photography. It’s less than he deserves.