Please ….

It’s no great secret to long time visitors here that I detest the landscape work of Ansel Adams. His picture postcard subjects, rendered in grossly over processed pretentious monochrome, leave me feeling physically ill. One of his most adulated snaps, ‘Moonrise Hernandez’ is a perfect example. Clearly taken in broad daylight (look at the shadows on the tombstones) it has been grotesquely processed to imitate moonlight. For all I know even the moon was pasted in from another image. As for his image of Half Dome, Yosemite …. well, better not to get me going.

Yet critically deprived Americans – eager for a claim to an ‘artist’ of their own – drool over his pictures and some even cough up serious coin to stick one of his monstrosities on the wall. The older and more yellowed, the more they pay. I know of what I speak, having had a close brush with death viewing the great man’s work myself. Yes, dear reader, I have held an original Adams print in my (cotton gloved) hands, which is more than 99.9% of his uncritical fans can say.

Well, if you thought his landscape work was pure garbage, be assured that his street photography makes it look good by comparison.

NPR has had the courage to reproduce twelve of his street snaps and it’s hard not to laugh once you have supressed the urge to cry at the thought that someone actually paid him for these. Just click the picture below, but maybe first get something cold, liquid and strong. You will need it.

Drink before you click.