There’s just one month left to go to see the Ansel Adams “Masterworks” photography exhibition at the Farmington Museum, and it’s not often that Durango residents are given the opportunity to drive only 50 miles to experience such an iconic collection of photos. While the Four Corners region is home to many beautiful natural wonders, it is not necessarily known for its abundant art culture.
“I came from LA and this is certainly the type of thing you expect to see at the Getty Institution,” explained Jeffrey Richardson, curator for the Farmington Museum. “We certainly feel honored to have the opportunity to host it here at the Farmington Museum.”
The show will pack up April 2 and move across the country to open again May 1 at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania.
Of course, even in light of the prestige of this show, it’s tempting to get sidetracked by the fact that Ansel Adams is practically a household name in the Southwest. Nearly everyone has seen one of his images, whether as a computer screen background, a postcard at the gas station or a poster hanging on a classroom wall. His work is everywhere. In fact, just about the only place most people haven’t seen it is in the form of original prints hanging on a museum wall.
“It’s really powerful when you see Ansel’s work in any sort of form, whether it be on a computer monitor or in a printing in a local store,” Richardson said. ”But having seen the exhibition myself for the first time, you really do kind of feel like you are transported to that place.”
This particular collection was one of the last projects Adams worked on. He had spent more than 60 years capturing moments on film and turning them into experiences. This collection was an opportunity to gather only the best, perfect them just a little more, and share them with the world.
“Ansel was approached with the idea of putting together a kind of definitive set of his life’s work,” Richardson explained. “A retrospective and a master set of prints that could be distributed to museums, institutions and high-end collectors that would really allow the public to see a total sweep of his life’s work.”
The original plan was to create 2,500 prints from 70 of Adams’ favorite and most influential images dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, but Adams died before the project was completed. The 47 original prints on display in Farmington were chosen by Adams in the last decade or so of his life, and make up this travelling exhibition known as the “Masterworks” or “The Museum Set.”
Richardson noted that, “because [Adams] printed throughout his lifetime, often working from the same negatives, those prints look dramatically different if they were printed in the 1930s or printed in the 1970s.”
Of course, even without his magic touch in the dark room, honed over the decades, Adams’ negatives were practically flawless to start with. He had an understanding for the mechanisms of the camera that allowed him to visualize a moment and use the camera to capture that exact image.
“You would think these were done with high-definition cameras because of their resolution, because of their sharpness and their clarity,” Richardson said. “But he was using some very old equipment by our standards to capture things that, today, with the finest equipment, people still wouldn’t be able to capture.”
This collection transports its viewers all over the United States, from New York to Hawaii, to California and New Mexico as well. The audience can gaze through the lens at White Sands National Monument in 1942 and at Half Dome in 1927, and they can feel a whisper of the awe that struck Adams in those very moments.
In the end, Adams’ work was about much more than just capturing scenes. It was about documenting experiences that could be shared across humanity. Certainly, those images are still breathtaking on a high-definition Mac computer screen. There is also an experience to be had though, in standing in the presence of the works themselves and seeing the very pieces of paper that Adams hand-selected for us to see.
The Farmington Museum is open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Entrance to see the Ansel Adams Masterworks is $5 for adults ages 19 and up, $3 for ages 3-18 and free for children 2 and under.
