Hidden Winter Destination in Atlanta

By Ken "Max" Parks
Examiner.com Writer/Photographer
January 10, 2011

About 35 miles north of Atlanta is a small town of seemingly little importance. However, it has a hidden treasure in a very modern museum and an opportunity for Atlanta travelers to visit. The Booth Western Museum in Cartersville has been the temporary host of the best photographic displays ever produced, an Ansel Adams collection.

The “Ansel Adams: A Legacy” exhibit is a collection of his finest prints made from his California darkroom. The 130 prints were produced by the master of photography during the 1960s and 70s when he was at the pinnacle of his superior skills.

These prints are exactly the way he wanted them displayed; they were not produced from an assistant or cropped by a publishing editor. That's what makes them unique. Ansel Adams rendered the artisitc prints from negatives which he considered to be a sketching pad. He applied the mastery of the darkroom to create images that continue to amaze photographers and artist to this very day. Surprisingly, the manipulation of his darkroom craft is very similar to the digital post-production of software applications such as Photoshop.

The people of the digital generation may be disillusioned about the Ansel Adams process of creativity. The same have never fumbled with a roll of film while stretching the plastic across the tracks in the back of a camera on a cold wintry day. They will discover the darkroom mock-up at the museum was the way Ansel Adams invented the “Zone System.” He fabricated the coding of dark and light gradations with dodging and burn-in techniques of his magic-wands.

Some may claim that Adams was a purist and that the images were exactly what came out of his box-type cameras. Instead, we find that his artistic renditions were the ingenuity of his darkroom wizardry, the power of a illusion mixed in his caldron of creativity. Perhaps this can be said, “His work-flow from the shutter release to the chemical processes and techniques in the darkroom show the true genius of Ansel Adams.”

The “Ansel Adams: A Legacy” exhibit and entry to the Booth Western Museum cost is $10 for general admission and is open through February 20, 2011.