The Camera vs. the Brush

In 1947 Fortune magazine commissioned four painters and one photographer to depict some of America’s most iconic national parks. To their credit the art editors of the business magazine hired a diverse group of artists, including Dong Kingman, a Chinese American watercolorist, Jane Berlandia, a French American modernist, and David Fredenthal, an emotionally scarred war correspondent, to document Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, and Grant Teton National Parks. The two most famous participants of the commission were Max Ernst, the internationally recognized, German-born Surrealist, and Ansel Adams, who Fortune called “the foremost photographic interpreter of the West.” The magazine’s invitation was not designed to be a contest and yet in the eyes of Adams and his supporters, it became something greater, having far-reaching consequences, pitting the “camera vs. the brush.” Time magazine even declared that Adams and his camera were the winners. This pleased the photographer who saw his victory as a “milestone for photography.” Judging from the “thousands upon thousands of tourists” that followed (and continue to follow) “Adams’ well-beaten trail,” photography became thelens through which the national parks were seen and understood. This essay explores the history of Fortune’s article and the consequences of the supposed victory of Adams and his medium. It examines the ways in which this forgotten episode exposed deeper rifts in midcentury American art, the shifting lines between art and photography, and the nature and importance of the National Parks and who was entitled to represent them

Art · Art history · Brush · Computer graphics (images) · Photography · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics) · Visual arts · Computer Science · Engineering · Law · Photography and Visual Culture