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On a blazing summer day in 1916, a teenager named Ansel Adams (1902–1984) first encountered the awesome beauty of Yosemite Valley. “From that day,“ he later wrote, “my life has been colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra.“ This youthful awakening to the sublime power of the wilderness was the beginning of a lifelong journey for Adams – a quest in which he would discover the power of photography to reveal mankind’s place in the natural world. His work was part of an extraordinary revolution in photography that sought to capture what Adams called “the continuous beauty of things that are,“ the landscape of the North American continent. More than any other artist of the twentieth century, Adams helped transform the meaning of wilderness in America; his greatest images of the American West changed forever what Americans thought about their own land. American Experience presents Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film, written and directed by Ric Burns and co-produced by Sierra Club Productions and Steeplechase Films. For the centennial of the artist’s birth, Burns has created an elegant, moving, and lyrical portrait of this quintessentially American photographer. The documentary weaves together archival footage, photographic images, dramatic readings of the artist’s own writing, and interviews with leading photographers, historians, curators, naturalists, as well as Adams’s family, friends, and colleagues, to tell the story of a man who was at once a visionary photographer, a pioneer in photographic technique, and an ardent crusader for the cause of environmentalism. In making the biographical film, Burns blazed trails of his own through the Sierra to capture the essence of Adams’s unique relationship with his subject matter. “To get to the heart of what so inspired Ansel Adams, we literally followed in his footsteps,“ said Burns. “We lugged our cameras up sheer rock faces and hiked the winding trails that led Ansel to his photographic revelations. And they led us to Ansel.“ Burns’ dramatic footage – fluidly juxtaposed with the photographer’s extraordinary work – places Adams’s photos in their natural context for the first time on television. Directed by: Ric Burns Written by: Ric Burns Starring: Ansel Adams, John Szarkowski, Carl Pope, Jonathan Spaulding, William Turnage, Andrea Gray Stillman, Mary Street Alinder, Anne Adams Helms, Michael Adams, John Sexton, Alan Ross Produced by: Adrienne Bramhall, Ric Burns, Margaret Drain, Sharon Grimberg, Annette Handley Chandler, Kate Roth Knull, Susan Mottau, Marilyn Ness, Steve Rivo, Mark Samels, Inness Wei Narrated by: Josh Hamilton, Barbara Feldon Music by: Brian Keane Cinematography by: Michael Chin, Jon Else, Buddy Squires Editing by: Syndi Pilar, Li-Shin Yu Release date: April 21, 2002 Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes Countries: United States Language: English Production companies: Sierra Club Productions, Steeplechase Films Distributed by: Public Broadcasting Service, WGBH, Warner Home Video
