Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams has long been a popular figure, but his reputation among serious critics and historians has not kept pace with his popularity. He is often considered to be an artistic lightweight, a technical wizard whose work is as unchallenging as it is accessible. A. D. Coleman, for example, has likened his work to that of Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell (A. D. Coleman, Light Readings: A Photography Critic's Writings, 1968–1978, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1998, pp. 122–24). More recently, David Peeler has compared him unfavourably to Stieglitz, Strand and Weston, claiming that his artistic accomplishments were not as significant as theirs (David P. Peeler, The Illuminating Mind in American Photography: Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Adams, Rochester: University of Rochester Press 2001, p. 275). So too, contemporary photographers have turned away from Adams's pristine vision of nature to a more critical investigation of the American scene, in which mountains mix with tract homes and nuclear power plants. In that context, Adams has become something of a relic, or a cliché

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