September 22, 2008 Adams Scholar To Discuss "Ansel Adams and His Books: Photographs In Ink"

Anne Hammond, an expert on the photographer Ansel Adams, will discuss his works that have been published in books during a Library of Congress program on Thursday, Oct.16, at noon in the Mumford Room, sixth floor of the Madison Building, at 101 Independence Ave. S.E. The program, co-sponsored by the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book and its Prints and Photographs Division, is part of the center’s Books & Beyond author series. It is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. In the course of his career, Ansel Adams used all three major forms of photographic reproduction in his printed books: letterpress halftone, offset lithography and photogravure. All these processes divide photographic gradations into minute dots of ink that merge optically into areas of tone, with each method offering its own special aesthetic characteristics of ink and paper. Adams’ photographic career was paralleled by his desire to achieve the finest quality of photomechanical reproduction of his images in his many finely crafted books. This talk highlights three books by Adams that are representative of the three major forms of ink reproduction of photography: “Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail” (letterpress halftone); “This Is the American Earth” (photogravure); and “Images, 1923-1974” (offset lithography). Hammond is research fellow in photography at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England in Bristol. She is the author of “Ansel Adams: Divine Performance” (Yale University Press, 2000) and “Ansel Adams at Manzanar” (Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2006), among many other publications. Ansel Adams’ photos of the WWII Manzanar internment camp are available on the Library of Congress Web site at https://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/manzhtml/manzabt.html. They are housed in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, is the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled collections and integrated resources to Congress and the American people. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may also be accessed through the Library’s Web site www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a new, personalized Web site at www.myLOC.gov. The Center for the Book was created in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading. For information about its programs, publications and national reading-promotion networks, visit www.loc.gov/cfbook/. The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division houses almost 14 million visual materials. More than 1 million digitized images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog at www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html. From the same era as the Ansel Adams’ Manzanar photos are the more than 170,000 images that comprise the FSA/OWI Collection (https://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/fsacabt.html). The collection’s 1,600 color images are also accessible through the online photo sharing community known as Flickr, at www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361/.