“This revolutionary dive into one of America’s most renowned photographers seeks to understand his artistic development and what came before his iconic frontier images. Dr. Rebecca Senf, chief curator of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, analyzes early moments in Ansel Adams’ career, such as his commercial work with Yosemite National Park, and his own recorded reflections. These experiences, often overlooked and overshadowed by his later, more publicly known photos, are integral to understanding his creative genius. ”

“From the Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography – home to the Ansel Adams archive – Rebecca Senf has leveraged her unparalleled access and curious, analytic eye to bring us something completely new and interesting about one of America’s best-recognized photographers. Senf presents an academic but accessible visual and historic context for Adams’ famous photographs by looking at the first decades of his career, shedding light on his artistic development and evolution into an environmentalist and entrepreneur.”

“A lecture led by Dr. Rebecca Senf, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ. Senf is a scholar on Ansel Adams whose work has focused on his early career and how that defined and influenced his masterworks as one of the most notable photographers in the 20th century.”

“Dr. Rebecca Senf is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book ‘Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe’ was released by University of California Press; in 2017, her book ‘To Be Thirteen,’ showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar and author of a book on the photographer’s early years, called ‘Making a Photographer,’ co-published by the CCP and Yale University Press in 2020. ”

“Ansel Adams arrived in Yosemite as a fourteen-year-old tourist in a wilderness wonderland; over the next ten years of exploration he cemented a meaningful and lifelong connection to the natural world that informed both his environmentalism and his photography. Rebecca Senf, author of the new book ‘Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams,’ will talk about the photographer’s experiences and how they can be seen in his artwork. Moderated by Katherine A. Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography. ”

“‘Making a Photographer’ offers, again and again, new stories and new background to the formative years of Ansel’s development. It brings the treasures and the surprises from the Center for Creative Photography’s archive, and that of others, to the surface and shares them, in scholarly detail.”

“The book itself is a page-turner, humanizing Adams’ life and presenting a thorough understanding of his work in the 1920s and 30s — a critical period in his creative development, and, perhaps, the most overlooked period of his career. Illustrated by a mix of commercial and creative photographs, the book sheds light on specific assignments, considering how they helped shape his better-known work.”

“A recently opened exhibition and a new book offer fresh perspective on Ansel Adams, the much admired (and highly collectible) photographer of the American West.

This past weekend, ‘Ansel Adams in Our Time’ went on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The exhibition takes one hundred of Adams’ most iconic works and displays them alongside both nineteenth-century predecessors and contemporary successors “who both influenced, and were influenced by, the legendary American artist.” The exhibition will remain up through January 3, 2021, after which it will travel to the Portland Art Museum for a spring run.

There’s also a new book out on Adams titled ‘Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams’ by Rebecca A. Senf, published by Yale University Press in association with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.”

“PAC•LA is pleased to announce a virtual visit by our long-time friend and Ansel Adams scholar, Dr. Rebecca Senf of the Center for Creative Photography. Dr. Senf’s recently published book, ‘Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams,’ will be the topic of our discussion. We will learn about Adams’ early commercial work within Yosemite National Park, and how it influenced the creation of his iconic works we know so well.”

“Ansel Adams’ bold, black-and-white landscapes of the American wilderness are so iconic that most people know an Adams photograph when they see it.

You might be surprised to learn that Adams didn’t learn his craft by attending an elite art institution or by apprenticing with a master photographer.

My new book, “Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams,” charts Adams’ early years, demonstrating how this self-taught expert learned from experience to identify his audience, hone his message and imbue his photographs with drama and emotion. I discovered that the eight years he spent working for the marketing department of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company – the sole provider of lodging, dining and entertainment services for Yosemite National Park – had a particularly profound influence on his later work.”

“CCP Chief Curator Becky Senf sums up why LIGHT started a revolution: “For a long time there had been a notion that photography wasn’t art because you used a camera, which was a machine, and so anything made with a machine clearly was not an art. And the LIGHT Gallery had a mission to change people’s perception of what photography would be.””

“‘From Above’ includes around 80 works from the Center’s Collection, along with several loans from artists. The exhibition explores the variety of reasons photographers have taken to the air. Even though all these photographs have strong visual appeal, and can be appreciated as photographic works of art, the prints are grouped according to the intention of their original maker. To underscore the diversity of aerial photography’s applications, we have invited specialists from a variety of fields (graphic design, cartography, architecture, land management) to respond to the photographs from their particular point of view. These specialists’ words and perspectives appear with the images, encouraging alternate ways of seeing the work.”

Excerpt From: Rebecca A. Senf. ‘From Above: Aerial Photography from the Center for Creative Photography.’ Apple Books. ”

“A nice advantage of the large jury of diverse professionals was that it captured an equally diverse range of perspectives on books. Over the course of two separate day-long sessions, a portion of the jury would meet and review books, each juror giving each book a score. The jury was instructed to evaluate the submissions based on their effectiveness as books (as opposed to scoring them based on the quality of the photography presented in the book). We asked ourselves: How well did the maker combine images and text into the book medium? We considered issues like the type of binding; title page and endpaper design; printing method and reproduction quality; size, placement, and sequence of images; typeface choice, color and size; and use of text.”

“ From my position more generally as a photo historian and photo curator, I’m looking for photographers who are conveying something of themselves, that only they can say, through their artwork; and who have a good command of their craft, and are using their materials in a way that complements the message they are trying to convey. I consider it a bonus if they are able to clearly discuss what they are doing – that’s going to serve the photographer well, but isn’t at all necessary to my appreciation of their photographs (unless they communicate so poorly that I don’t understand the scope or depth of the project).”