Essay on the critical appraisal of Ansel Adams
There is an open question that defines photography theory as much as it plagues it: does a photographer take or make a photograph? Ansel Adams’s 1935 book, Making a photograph: an introduction to photography could well be considered the definitive response. A photograph remains an abstraction, even in its most primitive state as a sort of document or record and Adams’s skill lies in his ability to conceal his role as contriver, abstracter, imaginist, within the rhetorical apparatus of scientifically objective reality. …
