Ansel Adams Reveals His Creative Process in 1958 Documentary

Today marks what would be the 111th birth­day of Ansel Adams, the Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er who cap­tured the sub­lime pow­er of the wilder­ness, tak­ing icon­ic images of the Amer­i­can West, most notably in Yosemite Val­ley. (See pho­to gallery here.) Orig­i­nal footage doc­u­ment­ing the cre­ative life of Ansel Adams is sur­pris­ing­ly hard to come by online. So A/V Geeks and Devel­op Tube did us all a favor when they revived this 1958 doc­u­men­tary reveal­ing Adams’ tech­ni­cal approach to pho­tog­ra­phy, the cam­eras and relat­ed gear he car­ried to the field, and his thoughts on the artis­tic hori­zons of pho­tog­ra­phy.

Ansel Adams, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er (1958) is avail­able at YouTube and Archive.org. It will now appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment