Ansel Adams has made elegant, handsomely composed, a subject which, like motherhood, is almost beyond reproach. For many they are sufficient virtues, and these many need not wonder what the precise difference is between the best of Adams pictures and uncounted other neat, clean, and dramatic photographs of the glorious American west.
   
   The difference presumably depends from the fact that Adams understands better the character and significance of his subject matter, and thus is especially alert to those details, aspects, and moments that are most intensely consonant with the earths own tonic notes. We must remind ourselves, however, that all we know of Adams understanding of the earth comes to us not from any direct view into his mind or spirit, but only from photographs, little monochrome substitutes for his ultimately private experience. To the best of our knowledge, he knows no more than what he has shown us. As with any artist, his intuitions are finally no better than his prowess.

   What Adams pictures show us is different from what we see in any landscape photographer before him. They are concerned, it seems to me, not with the descriptions of objects - the rocks, trees, and water that are the nominal parts of the picture - but with the descriptions of the light that they modulate, the light justifies their relationship to each other.

   Ansel Adams was born in 1902, in San Francisco. He began to photograph the landscape of the American west more than fifty years ago, before the model A had begun to replace the model T.

   It does not seem likely that a photographer of the future will be able to bring to the heroic wild landscape the passion, trust, and belief that Adams has brought to it. If this is the case, his pictures are all the more precious, for they then stand as last records, for the young and the future, of what they missed. For the aging - for a little while - they will be souvenirs of what was lost.