Like many Amer­i­can sto­ries, the sto­ry of the Nation­al Parks begins with pil­lage, death, deep cul­tur­al mis­un­der­stand­ing, and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ism. Accord­ing to Ken Burns’ film series The Nation­al Parks: America’s Best Idea, we can date the idea back to 1851, with the “dis­cov­ery” of Yosemite by a maraud­ing armed bat­tal­ion who entered the land “search­ing for Indi­ans, intent on dri­ving the natives from their home­lands and onto reser­va­tions.” The Mari­posa Bat­tal­ion, led by Cap­tain James D. Sav­age, set fire to the Indi­ans’ homes and store­hous­es after they had retreat­ed to the moun­tains, “in order to starve them into sub­mis­sion.”

One mem­ber of the bat­tal­ion, a doc­tor named Lafayette Bun­nell, found him­self entranced by the scenery amidst this destruc­tion. “As I looked, a pecu­liar exalt­ed sen­sa­tion seemed to fill my whole being,” he wrote in his lat­er accounts, “and I found myself in tears with emo­tion.” He named the place “Yosemite,” think­ing it was the name of the Indi­an tribe the sol­diers sought to force out or erad­i­cate. The word, it turned out “meant some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent,” refer­ring to peo­ple who should be feared: “It means, ‘they are killers.’”

In 1855, a failed Eng­lish gold prospec­tor turned the place into a tourist attrac­tion, and peo­ple flood­ed West to see it, prompt­ing New York wor­thies like Horace Gree­ley and Fred­er­ick Law Olm­st­ed to lob­by for its fed­er­al pro­tec­tion. In 1864, Abra­ham Lin­coln deed­ed Yosemite Val­ley and the Mari­posa Grove, with its giant sequoias, to the state of Cal­i­for­nia. Ever since then, Nation­al Parks have been threatened—if not by the occa­sion­al polit­i­cal can­di­date and his bil­lion­aire back­ers hop­ing to pri­va­tize the land, then by oil and gas drilling, and by fire, ris­ing seas, or oth­er effects of cli­mate change. Though the U.S. emp­tied many of the parks of their inhab­i­tants, it is iron­i­cal­ly only the actions of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that pre­vents the process begun by the Mari­posa Bat­tal­ion from reach­ing its con­clu­sion in the total despo­li­a­tion of these land­scapes. It is these land­scapes that have most come to sym­bol­ize the nation­al char­ac­ter, whether as back­ground in Fred­er­ic Rem­ing­ton’s paint­ings of the Indi­an Wars or in the pho­tographs of Ansel Adams, who began and sus­tained his career in Yosemite Val­ley. “Yosemite Nation­al Park,” writes the Nation­al Park Service’s web­site,” was Adams’ chief inspi­ra­tion.”

Adams first became inter­est­ed in vis­it­ing the Nation­al Park when he read In the Heart of the Sier­ras by James Hutchings—that failed Eng­lish gold prospec­tor. There­after, Adams pho­tographed Nation­al Parks almost rit­u­al­ly, and in 1941, the Nation­al Park Ser­vice com­mis­sioned Adams to cre­ate a pho­to mur­al for the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or Build­ing in DC. The theme, the Nation­al Archives tells us, was to be “nature as exem­pli­fied and pro­tect­ed in the U.S. Nation­al Parks. The project was halt­ed because of World War II and nev­er resumed.” It must have felt like an espe­cial­ly sacred duty for Adams, who trav­eled the coun­try pho­tograph­ing the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Rocky Moun­tain, Yel­low­stone, Yosemite, Carls­bad Cav­erns, Glac­i­er, and Zion Nation­al Parks; Death Val­ley, Saguro, and Canyon de Chelly Nation­al Mon­u­ments,” and oth­er loca­tions like the Boul­der (now Hoover) Dam and desert vis­tas in New Mex­i­co.

The pho­tographs you see here are among the 226 tak­en by Adams for the project. They are now housed at the Nation­al Archives, and you can freely view them online or order prints at their site. At the top, we see a snow-cov­ered tree from an apple orchard in Half Dome, Yosemite, where Adams had his first pho­to­graph­ic “visu­al­iza­tion” in 1927. Below it, the “Court of the Patri­archs” in Zion Nation­al Park, Utah. Fur­ther down, we have a breath­tak­ing vision of the ser­pen­tine Grand Canyon, and just above, one of the few man­made struc­tures, “Cliff Palace” at Mesa Verde Nation­al Park in Col­orado. And here can you see a pho­to­graph of the Snake Riv­er in Grand Teton Nation­al Park.

The mur­al project may have been aban­doned, but Adams nev­er stopped pho­tograph­ing the parks, nor advo­cat­ing for their pro­tec­tion and, in fact, the pro­tec­tion of “the entire envi­ron­ment,” as he told a Play­boy inter­view­er in 1983. “Only two and a half per­cent of the land in this coun­try is pro­tect­ed,” said Adams then: “Not only are we being fought in try­ing to extend that two and a half per­cent to include oth­er impor­tant or frag­ile areas but we are hav­ing to fight to pro­tect that small two and a half per­cent. It is hor­ri­fy­ing that we have to fight our own Gov­ern­ment to save our envi­ron­ment.”

You can peruse the col­lec­tion of Ansel Adams’ nation­al park pho­tos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

How to Take Pho­tographs Like Ansel Adams: The Mas­ter Explains The Art of “Visu­al­iza­tion”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Musi­cians can often become con­sumed by GAS—or “gear acqui­si­tion syn­drome”—obsess­ing over equip­ment for years instead of mak­ing music with what they have. This is dri­ven in part by the intim­i­dat­ing snob­bery of gear elit­ists, and in part by con­sumer mar­ket­ing seek­ing to con­vince us that we nev­er have enough. It seems that the pho­tog­ra­phy world also suf­fers from GAS, and, as a 1962 pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to mag­a­zine by Hunter S. Thomp­son shows us—writes the pho­tog­ra­phy blog Peta Pix­el—“the land­scape of the pho­to world half a cen­tu­ry ago may not have been too dif­fer­ent from what we see today.”

In such a land­scape, gonzo jour­nal­ist, “exis­ten­tial­ist life coach,” and hob­by­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomp­son became a stren­u­ous advo­cate for the spar­tan art of snap­shot pho­tog­ra­phy. He wrote his pitch let­ter to Pop Pho­to in response to an arti­cle by Ralph Hat­ter­s­ley called “Good & Bad Pic­tures,” and to pro­pose his own essay on the sub­ject with the pos­si­ble title “The Case for the Chron­ic Snap­shoot­er.”

He first describes the feel­ing imposed on him by the New York pho­to world that “no man should ever punch a shut­ter release with­out many years of instruc­tion and at least $500 worth of the finest equip­ment.” In such an elit­ist envi­ron­ment, he became “embar­rassed to be seen on the street with my rat­ty equip­ment” and “stopped tak­ing pic­tures alto­geth­er.” Hattersley’s piece, however—which “cites Weegee and Cartier-Bresson”—convinced him that “snap­shoot­ing is not, by def­i­n­i­tion, a low and igno­rant art.” He revis­it­ed his prints, he writes, “and decid­ed that not all of them were worth­less. As a mat­ter of fact there were some that gave me great plea­sure.”

That’s my idea in a nut­shell. When pho­tog­ra­phy gets so tech­ni­cal as to intim­i­date peo­ple, the ele­ment of sim­ple enjoy­ment is bound to suf­fer. Any man who can see what he wants to get on film will usu­al­ly find some way to get it; and a man who thinks his equip­ment is going to see for him is not going to get much of any­thing.

The moral here is that any­one who wants to take pic­tures can afford ade­quate equip­ment and can, with very lit­tle effort, learn how to use it. Then, when the pic­tures he gets start resem­bling the ones he saw in his mind’s eye, he can start think­ing in terms of those added improve­ments that he may or may not need.

You can read Thompson’s full let­ter here. His advice to would-be pho­tog­ra­phers not only offers inspi­ra­tion to ama­teurs and hob­by­ists; it also gives us a phi­los­o­phy of pho­to­graph­ic art (and art more gen­er­al­ly) as an exten­sion of our nat­ur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties, or “mind’s eye.” His “moral” might apply broad­ly to any cre­ative endeav­or like­ly to be stymied by GAS.

Thomp­son makes the case that what­ev­er we can afford can get us where we need to go: “Why give up because you can’t afford a cam­era with a 1.8 or 1.4 lens?” he writes, “First push 3.5 to its absolute lim­it, and if it still bugs you, you’ll find some way to buy that oth­er cam­era. If not, you don’t need it any­way.” He acknowl­edges that his the­sis “will rub some of your high-priced adver­tis­ers the wrong way,” but writes that shut­ter­bugs who can­not get results on low­er-priced gear will only be dis­ap­point­ed when they fail sim­i­lar­ly with the high-priced stuff.”

The push to shop instead of cre­ate com­pels us to obsess over what we don’t have—Thompson urges us to learn to make the very best with what we do.

You can see some of Thomp­son’s pho­tographs here.

via Peta Pix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness