Despite objections, Adams’ photos shown

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — They are photos Ansel Adams never intended anyone to see -- tiny proofs taken with a hand-held camera of a landscape that lacks the grandeur captured in his portraits of the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite National Park.

But thanks to some connections and a quirk of inheritance law, and over the objections of the trust that controls the use of Adams’ work, the few dozen 5-inch-square proofs are on display at a small museum not far from the inland waterway where Adams shot the pictures in 1940.

“Adams’ prints are perfection,” exhibit curator Stephen Jareckie said. “But these proofs have a certain vitality that you don’t find in a finished print. It gives them an educational point of view and shows the public what Adams’ work is like at that stage -- a work in progress.”

The proofs -- taken with a Zeiss Super Ikonta BX handheld camera instead of the larger view camera mounted on a tripod that Adams typically used -- were shot as Adams and a friend, David McAlpin Hunter, traveled the Intracoastal Waterway in 1940 from Virginia to Georgia.

The exhibition of 50 photos, about 30 of which are credited to Adams, runs through Dec. 2 at the Museum of the Albemarle. It was shown earlier this year at the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts.

Jareckie came across the proofs in the estate of McAlpin’s second wife. McAlpin and Adams worked on founding the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where McAlpin was a trustee. Jareckie also curated a 2003 exhibition at the Fitchburg museum of proofs from a 1937 camping trip Adams took with McAlpin and their mutual friend, artist Georgia O’Keeffe.

The trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust in Mill Valley, Calif., believe that Jareckie is taking advantage of Adams’ fame. Although they can keep the images from being reproduced, they are powerless to stop an exhibition.

Such shows display what are basically snapshots, “not works he ever would have shown in a museum,” said William Turnage, one of three Adams’ trustees. “I think it’s unethical in terms of museum ethics and behavior. It’s something that never would be done at MoMA or the Art Institute of Chicago.”

Adams, who also trained as a concert pianist, compared proofs to the score and a finished print to the performance. His biographer, Mary Alinder, said the photographer would never have authorized the exhibit.

“His complete art was not only the making of the negative but also his own interpretation of the negative into a print,” she said.

But Alinder said the proofs are an important part of the historical record, documenting a time in Adams’ life as well as the importance of his friendship with McAlpin and their appreciation of photography as an art.

“My point would be that it should clearly be stated that these are proofs,” she said. “They could be night and day from what Ansel would have interpreted.”