Strip Ansel Adams of his name, his reputation, and his place in history, then hand him a fresh account with zero followers. How many likes does "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome" actually pull? That thought experiment cuts straight into how you judge your own images and whether follower counts have anything to do with artistic worth.
The question comes from Adrian Vila, who admits upfront that he loves Adams' work and has read almost the entire library, including "The Camera," "The Negative," and "The Print." Vila's argument is simple: the masters didn't make their work in a vacuum. Adams shot at a specific moment and a specific place, pushing both the artistry and the technology of the American West farther than anyone before him. He wasn't the first to photograph those landscapes. He was working at the cutting edge of the gear available, hauling heavy equipment into remote spots and hiking with it just to photograph a rock or a tree, and few people could afford the cameras or the darkroom he had at home.
That context reshapes how you read "Monolith," made 99 years ago. Vila points out that the image means something entirely different now than it did in 1927. Back then, the accomplishment was producing such a detailed print of a landscape at all. Today an image like it would barely gain traction, because the technology, the expectations, and the culture have all shifted underneath it. He extends the same logic to Henri Cartier-Bresson in street photography and to Michael Kenna, whose work directly influences Vila's own long-exposure approach. Each of them was disruptive when they arrived, and in most cases the work was dismissed before it settled into the thing later photographers now call "traditional" or "real."
There's a useful principle sitting inside this for anyone shooting today. Recognition runs on a delay. What reads as canonical now was once strange enough to get ignored, and the gap between making the work and the work being understood can stretch across decades. That pattern holds well beyond photography. The photographers we treat as reference points were rewarded for stepping past what came before them, not for reproducing it, which puts the endless recreation of famous shots in a clearer light. Standing on the same overlook as a master and making the same frame teaches you plenty about craft. Treating that copy as the finish line is where the trouble starts, because the images that eventually get called "real" art tended to break from the reference rather than repeat it.
Vila is honest that this might sound irrelevant to most of us, since the vast majority aren't shooting to leave a mark on photography's history. He still makes the personal case for it. Going to locations and remaking images that other photographers have already made is how he learns, and he has no problem admitting it. The point is to move past that at some point, following your own gut and your own instincts even when the work gets no attention. Staying true to yourself matters more than the traction, and maybe in 15, 20, or 100 years that overlooked work becomes settled art. The evolution doesn't have to be total. Some shift just has to happen.
He frames the whole reflection around a slow stretch, admitting photography hasn't been treating him well lately and that the harsh midsummer light isn't helping. That framing keeps the video grounded rather than preachy, and it lands the actual takeaway: separate the artist's name from the artwork and you're forced to confront what you genuinely value in an image.
Watch the full breakdown in the video above to hear how Vila connects Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and Kenna into a single argument about finding your own voice.
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12 Comments
A modern moron would just replace the sky, raise the shadows until there is no more detail to uncover, and ask AI to spice the 'photo' up a bit. In the end justifying the edits saying editing is of all times.... 😬👍
The real genius of Ansel Adams, in my opinion, lies in the print. Of course, all of his work in the field with filters and application of the zone system were critical stages of the photographic process, but looking at a print of his in a gallery is what distinguishes his work from others. Would it be enough to land his work in a gallery, and garner fame and fortune today? Maybe not, although I think the sheer artistry of his prints would deserve a place in one. It's virtually impossible with enormous volumes of images flowing through social media every day for anyone to stand out from the crowd. And judging a picture by a tiny number of pixels on a cellphone can make a lot of bad photography look impressive.
His environment and ours today are almost two different universes. But I still think the print is where quality photography is distinguished from ordinary photography, and his prints are truly magnificent by the standard of any era. While I myself and many other photographers make prints using modern inkjet printers, some people claim that the gelatin silver prints Adams made are superior. Either way, it's the print that gives life to an image, and it was his work in the darkroom that inspires me today.
Yes, indeed, his darkroom work was in his mind even when he was at the scene, previsualizing what he saw. I discovered him around 1969 and devoured all his books in the series. He was almost like a scientist performing visual art. In most circles today, print is seen as very quaint. Fast-scrolling on the phone to find among thousands of photos, a landscape photo taken while dangling from a cliff has become the idea of photography.
Also, remember Minor White's 30-minute rule. He used to say that you had to look at a photograph 30 minutes before you could say anything about it.
Were you able to meet him? From what I've read, Ansel seemed like the type who would welcome anybody into his home.
Were he alive today, I think he would be a master of Photoshop. Chemistry was the “photographic science” of his time. He would not be held back from new innovation.
Do you think he would use generative fill?
Pure speculation... but I can easily imagine Ansel Adams tinkering with about any sort of new innovation. Granted, some may have become more to his liking and an established part of his workflow than others but, nevertheless, he was not one who appeared to have a closed mind or shied away from something new. Like many photographers of his time, their opinions and philosophy evolved. The idea of touching up a photo to make it look like a painting (pictorialist photography) was a style that Ansel and many photographers followed earlier in their career. It was not until 1932 at age 30 that he and others formed Group f/64 which emphasized sharp focus and detail, for the purpose of ensuring pictures look distinctly like photographs. Ansel was mostly known for his black and white landscapes but he also experimented with color film, using it for his commercial assignments. I don’t think he ever fully embraced color film, especially for his fine art work, but used it as necessary to meet the demands of his time.
Adams did, indeed, use a primitive form of generative fill in his photograph, “Winter Sunrise” Sierra Nevada, from Lone Pine, California, 1944. Quoting exactly from his book called “The Making of 40 Photographs” Ansel Adams said this:
“The enterprising youth of the Lone Pine High School had climbed the rocky slopes of the Alabama Hills and whitewashed a huge white LP for the world to see. It is a hideous and insulting scar on one of the great vistas of our land, and shows in every photograph made of the area. I ruthlessly removed what I could of the LP from the negative (in the left-hand hill), and have always spotted out any remaining trace in the print. I have been criticized by some for doing this, but I am not enough of a purist to perpetuate the scar and thereby destroy – for me at least – the extraordinary beauty and perfection of the scene. I have often thought what a privilege it would be to live and work in this environment, perhaps best before the turn of the century when the efforts of man brought more beauty to the land than now, with our pavements, wires, contrails, and desolation. This photograph suggests a more agreeable past and may remind us that, with a revived dignity and reverence for the earth, more of the world might look like this again.” - Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams was not trying to be inherently dishonest, nor was he creating a totally imaginary picture out of nothing. But he was, indeed, distorting reality. The key statement from his quote was ”I am not enough of a purist…” He was simply trying to render a photograph of nature as he thought nature should be. Is this photo by Adams an accurate representation of reality? Removing graffiti, black skies… are they a lie?
Consider, too, that the first Kodak prototype digital camera was developed in 1975, nine years before Adams died, so he undoubtedly had some thoughts kicking around in his mind about where digital photography might lead. I have not been able to verify the accuracy of this quote attributed to Ansel Adams, but it apparently appears in “Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man” by Andrea Stillman:
“In electronics, the technology we have now can do far more than film. As the world’s silver resources are depleted, these new technologies are particularly important. . . . Electronic photography will soon be superior to anything we have now. The first advance will be the exploration of existing negatives. I believe the electronic processes will enhance them. I could get superior prints from my negatives using electronics. Then the time will come when you will be able to make the entire photograph electronically. With the extremely high resolution and the enormous control you can get from electronics, the results will be fantastic. I wish I were young again!”
Your suggestion that ´new innovation´, ´closed mind´ and ´shied away from something new´ says something about the use of AI in these days is not something I agree with. You even use the word evolution, and said something like 'fighting against the tide of history' when I mentioned AI before. Can I assume you do not call a fully by AI created picture a photograph? You are not exactly clear about this.
About my percentages: I never use any AI to get rid of, or to add something to a photo. And if I did I would not call it a photo anymore. As I sad before you can still produce a work of art using AI, but not a photo when it's up to me. And if you use AI I want to know, that's important as I see it. I wrote before often doubting the so called 'photo's' rewarded an editors award on this site. I might think one of those is totally fake when it's not. Pretty sad if you ask me.
About the Winter Sunrise picture you mention: mr Adams is not a saint to me. I think it was silly to hide what was in his photo. You write his action was about the 'perfection of the scene'. And that might be my biggest problem with AI: the world is not perfect, it's not open minded or modern to try and make it perfect.
As I'm realising now I do use AI for deleting dust blobs in my photo's....I guess I'm not perfect either :-)
I am really curious where people draw a line: if a 100% AI generated picture is not a photo, what is? Or do you think 100% AI can produce something that can be called a photo Ed? Patrick Hall did not answer this question, I hope you are brave enough to reply 😁
No, I don't consider an image generated entirely 100% by AI text prompts to be a photograph. I believe it falls more under the category of computer graphics, having more similarities, perhaps, with an Adobe Illustrator image in its construction than a photograph.
I'm really not that big on names or titles though because, as you continue to hammer on, there is no clear distinct dividing line with the use of AI that separates simple editing tasks from content creation. AI can be anything from sharpening or noise removal, to generative fill which brings elements into the photo that did not exist. Those functions overlap more than you might think. Sorry I can't give you a precise distinction where the percentage turns from one to the other.
I'm okay with calling an AI image a picture. Even then, the distinction between picture and photograph is probably not something most people would appreciate. The two words have become mostly synonymous. I'm not going to jump all over anyone who calls their AI picture a photograph. And I don't criticize Fstoppers for having an AI contest. It opens the door to conversations like this that probably need to happen. The stakes are much higher in copyright law.
In the end it is/will be impossible to say if an image is 100% AI generated. So forgive me for asking a useless question.
I do believe there is a distinct dividing line: if you are faking it you know. Every photographer knows if he/she crosses a line.And off course Ansel Adams and competitors on this site don't have bad intentions.
The stakes being higher in copyright law hardly interest me. The regimes in the US, China, Israel, Russia, ect ect do. AI is a dream to any (wannabe) dictator, it's so usefull for 'fake news' shouting pigs, there is a reason Grok exists, ect.....
What would you call a true to life photo? A real photo? I wrote earlier I'm not a native. I do not exactly know when/how the word picture is used in the US, UK, Canada. But I do know that truth is important, photo's are important. So that is the reason for my annoying 'hammer on' behaviour as you call it. Forgive me, enjoy your lovely AI toy 😬👍
I am presently undecided on the extent to which I will personally use AI tools in my photography. It's purely an experiment at this point.
However, there is one thing I am as sure of as the morning sun rising in the east, and that is AI is no toy. AI in all of its incarnations has the capacity to fundamentally alter civilization.