NONFICTION - July 7, 1996

ANSEL ADAMS: A Biography By Mary Street Alinder (Henry Holt: $30, 489 pp.). An English major and registered nurse married to a photographer, Mary Street Alinder brought unique credentials when she became Ansel Adams’ executive assistant in 1979. Alinder worked closely with Adams in the last four years of his life, running his day-to-day affairs, helping him to complete his autobiography and tending to his worsening health.

Now she has written a loving, minutely researched portrait of the photographer that acknowledges his humanity while confirming his enormous artistic contribution.

Adams’ most enduring muse was the Yosemite Valley, a place he first visited as a teenager. He was sent there to recover after nearly dying from influenza during the pandemic of 1918-1919. Alinder writes, “Nature became his religion, and Yosemite and the surrounding Sierra Nevada his temple. As he returned to restore himself each summer till the end of his life, Yosemite remained central to his self-concept.”

That spiritual sensibility suffused the sublime landscapes he photographed in the 1930s and ‘40s. And although in later years his work declined, Adams found himself transformed into a kind of national treasure, able to lobby on behalf of wilderness with presidents and cabinet secretaries.

Alinder is candid about Adams’ failings, especially his glaring neglect of his wife, Virginia, and their two children, but she never really explains this gregarious man’s deep emotional estrangement from his family. The paradox, as Alinder’s account of her own time in Adams’ employ attests, was that he could inspire great love and loyalty in those around him.