Some Events of Ansel Adams’s Lifetime

1902: Adams born in San Francisco, only child of Olive Bray and Charles Hitchcock Adams. Lives in or next to family home for almost sixty years.

1906: The great San Francisco earthquake causes death of an estimated 3,000 people and destruction of 28,000 buildings. Adams breaks his nose during an aftershock.

1908: Adams is sent to public school. Later, his father arranges for him to be tutored at home. Adams takes up piano.

1916: Adams uses his first camera on family vacation to Yosemite.

1919: Adams joins Sierra Club. Photographs intensively and publishes first photograph in 1920.

1925: Adams decides to pursue career as concert pianist.

1928: Adams marries Virginia Best, whose father runs Best’s Studio at Yosemite. First one-person exhibition, at the Sierra Club. Meets Edward Weston.

1930: Adams decides on career in photography after seeing work of Paul Strand.

1932: First major one-person exhibition at de Young Museum, San Francisco.
Introduction of the first portable light meter, a device that becomes a key tool for Adams.

1933: Adams meets Alfred Stieglitz and has first New York exhibition. Opens Ansel Adams Gallery in San Francisco.

1936: Adams lobbies in Washington to have Kings Canyon made national park. One-person exhibitions in New York and Chicago.

1937: One-third of Adams’s early negatives destroyed in darkroom fire.

1940: With Edward Weston, Adams teaches his first workshop in Yosemite. Participates in establishment of world’s first museum department of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

1942: Adams develops Zone System technique of exposure and development control.

1945: Adams invited to establish department of photography at the California School of Fine Arts.

1946: Adams receives Guggenheim fellowship to photograph national parks (renewed 1948).

1949: Adams becomes consultant to Polaroid Corporation due to friendship with Edwin Land.

1952: Adams co-founds Aperture, a journal of creative photography.

1955: Annual Ansel Adams Yosemite Workshop begins.

1962: Adams builds home and studio overlooking the Pacific in Carmel. Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, which along with Adams’ and Nancy Newhall’s book, This is the American Earth (1960), helped launch modern era of environmental activism in America.

1965: Adams joins President Lyndon Johnson's environmental task force.

1971: After 37 years, Adams resigns as a director of the Sierra Club.

1972: Best's Studio renamed the Ansel Adams Gallery.

1975: Adams stops accepting print orders, but backlog of 3,000 ordered photographs requires three years to print. Center for Creative Photography, home of Adams archive, founded at University of Arizona, Tucson.

1979: Prints by Adams account for half the dollar value of photography sales in United States.

1980: Jimmy Carter awards Adams the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1981: Mural-sized print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold for $71,500, a record for a creative photograph.

1984: Adams dies April 22 at age 82.

1985: Peak on southeast boundary of Yosemite National Park named Mount Ansel Adams.

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Left corner image: Ansel Adams, American; From Hurricane Hill, Olympic National Park, Washington, 1948; gelatin silver print. The Lane Collection. ©2007 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.