When the name Ansel Adams is mentioned in conversation, people think of the romantic and mythic photographs he made throughout the American West, especially in Yosemite and the iconic shots of El Capitan and Half Dome.

In 1963, in his mid-60s, Adams received a letter from Clark Kerr, president of the University of California. Kerr wanted Adams to take on a six-year project, not to photograph the wilderness, but the built landscapes of the University of California campuses to create a book to be titled “Fiat Lux.” Kerr envisioned the book to be an important part of the centennial celebration of the University of California coming up in 1968.

When Adams accepted the six-year commission, the field of photography was breaking new ground and turning away from a tradition he helped create. 

A current exhibition at UCR ARTS, “Lost in the Wilderness: Ansel Adams in the 1960s,” creates a visual contrast between Adams’ commission and scenes from other photographers depicting the unrest of the 1960s.

In the exhibition, some of the young photographers working during the ’60s are clustered on the far wall. The photographs range from documentary photographs of protests to news events like the photo of Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s funeral and the funeral of Medgar Evers in 1963, the year Adams began “Fiat Lux.”

We see socially conscious projects and street photography and the definitive photography movement of the time, concept photography. One of the images works directly against Adams’s style. It is Rondal Partridge’s “Pave It and Paint It Green, Yosemite National Park,” taken circa 1965. It shows a parking lot overwhelmed with cars, like a steel river cutting from the foreground into the trees with the less-than-epic Half Dome in the distance. Ironically, Partridge was the son of Imogen Cunningham, Adams’ friend.

Despite Adams being a founding member of the pivotal Group f/64 that radically changed photography in 1932, nothing of the contemporary trends in photography or of society affected Adams as he went about his work. In fact, only two images he took in the 1960s reflect campus unrest. 

Why didn’t he take more photographs of what was going on as he was working on this project? One answer is that it wasn’t his focus. His job, according to Kerr, was to “relate more to the next hundred years than to the last century,” wrote Douglas McCulloh, senior curator and interim executive director of UCR Arts. Kerr’s project directive didn’t include the present.

"The protests and social changes of the day might not have interested Adams because he didn’t much enjoy focusing on forms or unrest that were outside of his control,” said Kathryn Poindexter-Akers, UCR ARTS’ head of exhibitions. “Adams had a steadfast commitment to the photographic aesthetic he developed borne out of complete control over his subject matter. With that dedication, he had effected change during his lifetime, as in helping to establish and protect national parks with his photography.”

Adams’ photographs of people look rigid and staged, having none of pictorialism’s sensibility. But they are exquisitely composed and exposed. In one image of UC Irvine, we view two monolithic white buildings towering over a landscape like limestone bluffs through landscaped palm trees. Sunlight bathes the buildings, so they glow against the dark storm clouds looming over the foothills beyond, creating tension in the viewer of impending change.

Is it any surprise the greatest environmental landscape photographer of the 20th century could make a new university campus majestic and assure us it will last a hundred years?

Curating the exhibition was a 10-year odyssey for McCulloh, who died right after it opened.

The exhibition remains open until Sept. 28. There will be a reception on Saturday, March 22 from 3-6 p.m., free and open to the public and a book will be available for sale, “Lost in the Wilderness: Ansel Adams in the 1960s.” 

Cover image of the UCR ARTS gallery by Nikolay Maslov/UCR ARTS.