Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea

Events included Sunday Salon afternoon piano recitalsClearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, about 1937. Photograph by Ansel Adams. © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Image courtesy of David H. ArringtonThis exhibition has now closed

Ansel Adams is the most popular and arguably the most influential photographer in American history. Famous for dramatic and evocative landscapes, he produced iconic and beautiful images of American nature. The forests, mountains and coastlines of the US provided a rich environment for Adams’s pioneering photography, and this exhibition brings together his most powerful and striking pictures of water in all its forms, from awe-inspiring images of epic seascapes, dramatic rapids and geysers, to crashing waterfalls, placid ponds, raging rivers and beautiful ice-locked landscapes.

Fluid, ephemeral, and unpredictable, water brought dynamic motion and feeling to his pictures. Water provided Adams with a persistent source of inspiration and opportunity for experimentation both in his art and his photographic process. Adams was a true pioneer whose influence continues to be felt to this day.

Witness over 100 original prints from the extraordinary detail of the tiniest images through to three of his ground-breaking photographic murals, each almost three meters in height.

Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea is a must-see exhibition for lovers of photography. Those who know Adams will see his art from a fascinating new angle, and those new to his work will be moved by its inspirational and elemental beauty.

Join our Flickr group to share your own water-inspired images.

The exhibition is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, USA with support by David H. Arrington and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.