THIS IS THE AMERICAN EARTH: AN EXHIBITION AND BOOK BY ANSEL ADAMS, NANCY NEWHALL, AND THE SIERRA CLUB by Josephine Minhinnett, BA Honours, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 2012 A thesis presented to Ryerson University and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Program of Photographic Preservation and Collections Management Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Rochester, New York, USA, 2014  Josephine Minhinnett AUTHOR’S DECLARATION PAGE I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I authorize Ryerson University and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Ryerson University and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. i ABSTRACT This Is the American Earth: An Exhibition and Book by Ansel Adams, Nancy Newhall, and the Sierra Club Master of Arts 2014 Josephine Minhinnett Photographic Preservation and Collections Management Ryerson University, Toronto, and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York During a remarkable period of growth for the Sierra Club during the Cold War, the club sponsored This Is the American Earth in 1954, a collaborative project between Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall that resulted in a 1955 exhibition of photographs and a 1960 photobook on the theme of nature conservation. The two productions of photography provide a crucial opportunity to examine how the medium was employed as a campaign tool and an instrument of propaganda over a period of six years. Yet, the project has been almost exclusively defined by its 1960 book. This thesis aims to recuperate the message and import of the 1955 exhibition to determine the function of the entire project, significantly revealing that in addition to being a social and political device, This Is the American Earth marked a critical point in Adams’s and Newhall’s ongoing battle for photography’s recognition as a fine art. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have graciously given their time and assistance to the development of this thesis. Firstly, thank you to David Featherstone for sharing your research and lending me important files on the project. At the Center for Creative Photography, thank you to David Benjamin for your great assistance throughout my research visit, and a special thanks to Leslie Squyres for granting access to my research material and for your ongoing patience in answering my continuous stream of requests. To my first reader, Jessica McDonald, I cannot express how grateful I am for your constant enthusiasm, guidance, and expert editorial hand. Thank you for sharing your personal insights and your personal library with me. To my second reader, Jessica Johnston, I am truly appreciative of the generosity of your advice and your strong words of encouragement. Thank you to the staff in the photography department at George Eastman House: Jamie Allen, Lisa Hostetler, Barbara Galasso, William Green, Ross Knapper, and Joe Struble for your feedback and support, and to my colleagues, Aya Sato and Darren Kinsman for your warm camaraderie throughout the process. To my Program Directors David Harris and Marta Braun, I am deeply grateful for your early encouragement in this topic and for your mentorship throughout my graduate studies. Thank you to David Scheinbaum for granting me permission to use unpublished material by Nancy Newhall, and thank you to the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust for granting me permission to use material by Ansel Adams. Lastly, thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, which enabled me to freely pursue this topic of research. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: PERSPECTIVES AND MOTIVATIONS THE SIERRA CLUB, ANSEL ADAMS, DAVID BROWER, AND NANCY NEWHALL ......................................... 13 1.1 THE SIERRA CLUB AND CONSERVATION ............................................................................................... 13 1.2 ANSEL ADAMS .................................................................................................................................................... 25 1.3 NANCY NEWHALL ............................................................................................................................................. 29 CHAPTER TWO: THE EXHIBITION THIS IS THE AMERICAN EARTH ................................................................ 32 2.1 PLANNING ............................................................................................................................................................ 32 2.2 PRESENTATION ................................................................................................................................................. 37 2.3 DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS ..................................................................................................................... 42 2.4 PUBLIC RECEPTION.......................................................................................................................................... 65 2.5 THE USIA ............................................................................................................................................................... 68 CHAPTER THREE: THE BOOK THIS IS THE AMERICAN EARTH ......................................................................... 72 3.1 TRANSFORMATION: FROM EXHIBITION TO BOOK ............................................................................ 72 3.2 AESTHETIC INFLUENCES ............................................................................................................................... 80 3.3 DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS ..................................................................................................................... 83 3.4 CONSERVATION PERSPECTIVES ................................................................................................................ 96 3.5 DISTRIBUTION, SALES, AND RECEPTION ............................................................................................ 100 CHAPTER FOUR: IMPACT AND LEGACY ................................................................................................................... 105 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................................ 111 APPENDIX A: This Is the American Earth Exhibition Photograph Sources ................................................. 114 APPENDIX B: This Is the American Earth Exhibition and Book Literary Sources .................................... 115 APPENDIX C: This Is the American Earth Exhibition Itinerary ......................................................................... 117 APPENDIX D: This Is the American Earth Exhibition Checklist ........................................................................ 119 PERMISSIONS ....................................................................................................................................................................... 151 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................................................... 155 iv INTRODUCTION Beginning in 1954, the American landscape photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and the writer, editor, and photography curator Nancy Newhall (1908-1974) began working together on a nature conservation-themed project called This Is the American Earth sponsored by the California outdoors group, the Sierra Club, in which Adams was a long-standing member. The project consisted of a one-room panel exhibition of 103 photographs and creative prose that opened in 1955, and a high-quality 1960 book on a similar theme containing eighty-five reproductions of primarily landscape photographs combined with poetic text. As a project conceived within the context of the Sierra Club, This Is the American Earth was intended to educate and persuade a broad audience to conserve America’s wilderness and natural resources. While This Is the American Earth and its historical contexts have been explored in the literature on photography, the exhibition has frequently been given superficial treatment as a precursory event to the book. Chronologically, this is true, yet this thesis aims for a more comprehensive treatment of the project by giving the exhibition equal consideration as the book, in order to understand how each of them reflected a specific time and set of motivations in the history of photography as well as the history of the conservation movement. Leading up to This Is the American Earth, Adams and Newhall had already been creatively collaborating on a series of articles and books. They had known each other since the late 1930s through their joint effort to establish a department of photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, and since then they had developed a close friendship and working partnership. In the midst of their long line-up of projects, they embarked on producing This Is the American Earth, which would consume their energies for a period of six years from 1954 to 1960. For the first part of the project the exhibitionNewhall, as curator, arranged the photographs and composed the text while Adams made prints and coordinated the logistics of installing the exhibition. For the book, Newhall was again responsible for the arrangement of photographs and text, while Adams oversaw the reproductions, printing, and logistics of book production and distribution. Although they had separate roles, Adams and Newhall worked closely together on all decisions regarding the exhibition and the book to craft a particular message about nature conservation. The project was a highly collaborative venture involving members of the Sierra Club, as well as experts on conservation whom Newhall consulted during her research. One notable Sierra Club 1 member who played a large role in developing the book was David Brower, the first Sierra Club Executive Director. Brower and Adams shared a similar viewpoint on nature conservation and a deep commitment to the traditions and activities of the Sierra Club. In addition to the many actors who participated in the production of This Is the American Earth, several organizations became involved in the project’s subsequent dissemination. The Smithsonian Institution circulated the exhibition This Is the American Earth across the United States beginning in 1956 and the United States Information Agency (USIA) sponsored a worldwide tour beginning in 1957 as part of its program to endorse American culture and prevent the spread of Communism. It is necessary to familiarize the reader with the two main actors in This Is the American Earth, Adams and Newhall, in order to understand how the project has been addressed thus far in the literature on photography. Ansel Adams is well recognized in current scholarship for his advocacy of straight photography and photography as a fine art during a time when few museums included photography in their collections or exhibited photography as more than illustration. His “zone system,” which dramatically expanded the possibilities of the camera, has been studied in depth and has given Adams a reputation for being a skilled technician of the camera and master printer.1 Adams was also an avid teacher and promoter of higher education as a way to advance photography as a vocation, and he actively influenced a generation of photographers through his workshops, courses, and lectures at universities, fine art schools, conferences, and photography clubs. Like many other photographers, Adams concurrently worked on commercial assignments, many of which employed him for his photographs of the American landscape. Ultimately, Adams had a long-term influence on photography’s acceptance as a fine art and the subsequent development of a nascent fine art photography market. Known for his majestic landscape photographs, he was also a serious advocate for environmental conservation, and hoped that through his photographs, he could help to preserve the astounding natural beauty of his country to which he felt a deep sense of responsibility, and which in turn gave him a profound feeling of meaningful existence in the world. It was through books that Adams could communicate and share his vision with a large audience at a time when photography was vying for a place in the art museum. He published several books and portfolios on America’s natural scene, focussing much of his work on the national parks. In his first 1 Adams primarily gained recognition as a skilled photographer through his “how-to” books on photography, Basic Photo, Vol. 1 The Camera and Lens (New York: Morgan and Lester, 1948); Vol. 2 The Negative (New York: Morgan and Lester, 1948); Vol. 3 The Print (New York: Morgan and Lester, 1950). 2 book Taos Pueblo, published in 1930, Adams collaborated with the writer and environmental activist Mary Austin to produce a limited edition book with tipped-in photographic illustrations.2 In 1938, Adams produced Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail containing high-quality reproductions of landscape photographs, in commemoration of the Sierra Club member Walter “Pete” Starr Jr. Additionally, with his wife Virginia Adams as publisher, Adams produced the hugely successful Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley as well as My Camera In Yosemite Valley, and from the thousands of negatives he produced during a Guggenheim Fellowship beginning in 1946, he completed My Camera in the National Parks and Portfolio Two: The National Parks and Monuments in 1950.3 In these and later years, a key partner in Adams’s projects was Nancy Newhall with whom he published many books and articles and mounted important exhibitions of his work. Although there have been recent attempts to examine Newhall’s major contributions to the field, her work has largely been overshadowed by the photographers and her husband Beaumont whom she collaborated with on books and exhibitions. Yet, throughout her life, Newhall made significant contributions to the critical study of photography through her published essays, articles, books, and reviews, in addition to numerous exhibitions and her role in co-founding the photography journal Aperture.4 Thus, it is necessary to outline in greater detail the events in Newhall’s life and her relationship to Adams as well as the field of photography. Nancy Newhall, born Nancy Wynne Parker, was a writer, editor, photography critic, and museum curator who began her career as an artist. After studying painting, creative writing, and theatre at Smith College, Newhall became a member of the Art Students League in New York in the 1930s. She showed great promise as a young painter and secured a solo exhibition of her paintings at the Grace Horne Gallery in Boston. It was through her interest in art that she met her husband Beaumont Newhall in 1933 while he was an art history graduate student at Harvard University. He later became the librarian at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It was soon after their marriage in 1936, while fervently helping Beaumont to organize his MoMA exhibition Photography 1839 -1937, that Nancy decided to devote the rest of her life to photography.5 Newhall was considerably involved in her husband’s work at MoMA although she was given no official position at the museum, 2 Ansel Adams and Mary Austin, Taos Pueblo (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1930). 3 Adams, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (Berkeley: Archetype Press, 1938); Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley, ed. Virginia Adams (San Francisco: H.S. Crocker Co., 1940); My Camera in Yosemite Valley, ed. Virginia Adams (San Francisco: H.S. Crocker Co., 1940); My Camera in the National Parks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950); Portfolio Two: The National Parks and Monuments (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1950). 4 Beaumont Newhall, introduction to From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Modern Photography, by Nancy Newhall (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1989). 5 Ibid. 3 and she was indeed involved in the original plans, with Beaumont, Ansel Adams, and the museum trustee Dave McAlpin, to found MoMA’s first department of photography in 1940.6 Just a year prior, the Newhalls and Adams had met in New York during the installation of Adams’s work in an exhibition at MoMA, and by the summer of 1940, the three were close friends.7 With the onset of World War II and the wartime absence of her husband in their newly founded department of photography, Newhall stepped in to fill his position from 1942 to 1945 in the capacity of assistant curator, and was later given the official title of acting curator.8 The war years were an exceedingly productive time for Newhall, who took reign of the department’s curatorial activities and launched a full program of exhibitions and events. She staged fifteen photography exhibitions, which included the work of photographers Eliot Porter, Helen Levitt, W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and others.9 She also produced the first major retrospectives of the photographers Paul Strand and Edward Weston, complete with illustrated catalogues, in addition to founding a photography center at MoMA in 1943 with a program of lectures, workshops, and smaller exhibitions.10 It was during this time that Newhall’s and Adams’s close friendship truly began to develop, with Adams giving lectures in New York and Newhall organizing an exhibition of his work, Manzanar: Photographs by Ansel Adams of Loyal Japanese American Relocation.11 Many productive discussions between them emerged from this time and secured their creative partnership on projects in future years. Upon Beaumont Newhall’s return from the Second World War in 1945, Edward Steichen, the Newhalls’ ideological antithesis in photography, became director of the department of photography, and the Newhalls, loyal to the ideals of Alfred Stieglitz and outraged by this unexpected change in 6 This is evident from her detailed written record of the early years of the founding of the department of photography at MoMA in her unpublished manuscript, Enduring Moment, ca. 1971, Nancy Newhall Collection at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson [hereafter cited as NN at CCP]. 7 Erin Kathleen O’Toole, “No Democracy in Quality: Ansel Adams, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, and the Founding of the Department of Photographs at the Museum of Modern Art,” (doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, 2010), 171. 8 Ibid., 328. Newhall was only officially given the title of acting curator in July 1943. 9 Beaumont Newhall, introduction to From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Modern Photography, by Nancy Newhall (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1989). 10 O’Toole, “No Democracy in Quality,” 237. Paul Strand: Photographs, 1915-1945, was exhibited from April 25 to June 10, 1945, and was the first retrospective of a photographer at an American museum. The Photographs of Edward Weston was exhibited from February 10 to March 31, 1946. “No Democracy in Quality,” 330-31. 11 Ibid., 282. 4 their program, left MoMA. The Newhalls soon relocated to Rochester, New York, where Beaumont became a curator, and later the director, at George Eastman House with Nancy assisting on projects as she had done at MoMA. In the years after the war, Newhall’s deep wish to bring to light the work of many significant modernist photographers led her to become an important editor and writer of photographers’ books. Already in 1940, she had begun to research and write Stieglitz’s biography, although she never finished. She became the editor of The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume I, Mexico which was eventually published in 1961 and was followed by the second volume in 1966.12 Newhall was also the co-author of Time In New England, a book she produced with photographer Paul Strand.13 However, it was Adams who was Newhall’s most significant collaborator, and as their profuse amount of correspondence reveals, they were also kindred spirits. Newhall and Adams collaborated on numerous books, workshops, commercial assignments, and exhibitions. While the list is by no means exhaustive, it is worth highlighting the fact that Newhall organized a major Adams retrospective in 1963 for the de Young Museum in San Francisco, wrote the first biography of Adams, Ansel Adams: Volume 1, The Eloquent Light, published by the Sierra Club in 1963, and produced many other books with Adams including Death Valley (1954), Mission San Xavier del Bac (1954), and Fiat Lux: The University of California (1967).14 In his introduction to a posthumous anthology of Newhall’s essays, Beaumont Newhall remarked that among her many collaborative projects with Adams and other photographers, her masterpiece was This Is the American Earth.15 Like many of Newhall’s major contributions, This Is the American Earth has been overlooked in the history of photography. It is mostly owing to Adams’s popularity as a photographer that reflections on the project have been scattered throughout the history of photography. One likely reason for the scarcity of information on the exhibition This Is the American Earth in particular is its ephemeral nature. A record of the arrangement of photographs and labels on each exhibition panel now only 12 Edward Weston, The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume 1, Mexico, ed. Nancy Newhall (New York: George Eastman House, 1961); The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume 2, California (New York: George Eastman House, 1966). 13 Paul Strand and Nancy Newhall, Time In New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950). 14Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: Volume 1, The Eloquent Light (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1963); Nancy Newhall and Ansel Adams, Death Valley (San Francisco: Five Associates, 1954); Mission San Xavier del Bac (San Francisco: Five Associates, 1954); Fiat Lux: The University of California (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967). 15 Beaumont Newhall, introduction to From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Modern Photography, by Nancy Newhall (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1989); Adams and Newhall, This Is the American Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1960). 5