Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Groups, such as f/64, of photographers that advocated “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph and using his work to promote conservation of wilderness areas.
His images were often monochrome highlighting the beauty in the formations of the landscapes rather than just focusing on the colours present, it adds a dramatic and powerful tone to the images potentially portraying the power of mother nature and the sublime drawing attention to the beauty of the environment around us.
He came up with a technique he referred to as the zone system, the 11 zones were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tones you can see in a black and white, with zone 5 being in the middle as grey, zone 0 being pure black, and zone 10 being pure white.
Group f/64
Formed in 1932 group f/64 constituted a revolt against Pictorialism. The group is named after the smallest setting of a large-format camera diaphragm aperture that gives a nice resolution and depth of field.
Many photo historians view the group as an organized faction consisting of the first seven photographers, and view the other four photographers as associated with the group by virtue of their visual aesthetics. However, in an interview in 1997, Dody Weston Thompson said that she was invited to join. She stated that Brett Weston also considered himself a member suggesting that knowing all the members is difficult to determine due to the informality of the group’s shifting social composition during the 1930s and 1940s.
Women of the group
While not all official members of Group f/64, the female photographers showed their work in the first exhibit, each displaying their own style, journey, and place in the history of photography.
The women of the group include:
-Imogen Cunningham
-Sonya Noskowiak
-Alma Lavenson
-Consuelo Kanaga
