until Monday September 02 2013
MoMA PS1
T : +1 (718) 784 2084
22-25 Jackson Ave at 46th Ave
NY 11101 New York
United States
Ansel Adams was one of the most socially engaged artist-activists of the American West. His photographic practice and thinking were informed by the writings of 19th-century transcendental philosophers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Advocating a life close to nature, he was an early supporter of the environmentalism that Theodore Roosevelt had championed during his presidency. Creatively engaging with dialectical reversals between visionary romanticism and political pragmatism, Adams photographed with a large format high-resolution apparatus the cosmic consciousness of Yosemite’s grand mountains, melancholic forests, falling rivers, operatic geysers, and sci-fi moon rises.
In light of recently escalating ecological disasters, Adams’s visionary exploration of our planet remains acutely contemporary in focus.
