Photography: The Old Master of Majesty Ansel Adams: 1902-1984

Ansel Adams: 1902-1984

Nature never seemed so still or so spiritual as in his photographs. In their purity and precision, their balance of epic vistas and exquisite detail, Ansel Adams' photographs celebrated an ideal vision of nature and the American West. That black-and-white vision was of a landscape unsullied by neon and Day-Glo plastic, a majestic continent that still seemed for all the world like a new-found land. Passionate about art and nature, Adams tolerated the desecration of neither. At his death from heart disease last week near his home in Carmel, Calif., Adams,...