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Authors: Mary Street Alinder
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Chinese hosts installed the nearly two hundred prints with great sensitivity, hanging them on brightly lighted and freshly painted white walls above polished floors with welcome pots of greenery in the corners of each of the many galleries. Ansel’s show proved extraordinarily popular—tickets were sold out by eight o’clock each morning. Thousands of people moved slowly in reverential silence through the exhibition, staring rapt for long periods at image after image; there was no problem with translation. The show, Ansel Adams: Photographer , was then invited to move to the National Museum of Art in Beijing, where it became the first exhibition by an American artist to be so honored since the Chinese revolution.
Some friendships combined work and pleasure. After wrestling with the Museum Sets and finally completing them in 1982, Ansel began once more to hear the call of photography, which for him meant the call of the outdoors. 4 He had always enjoyed having companions along while he photographed in the Sierra, on the trail with Cedric or other members of the club. Sometimes on a rare free Saturday or Sunday, when the quiet of his house proved too much for him to bear, Ansel would call Jim to ask if he would like to go photographing. Ansel and Jim had become good friends by this time, seeing themselves as comrades under the dark cloth, so to speak, although neither was using a view camera. Ansel knew that since he assumed the leadership of the Friends, Jim had had little time for his own photography and welcomed any chance to expose some rolls. Together, they drove over most of the roads of Monterey County, stopping when either one saw something he liked. 5
On our periodic trips to San Francisco, Virginia and I would take the backseat of Ansel’s 1977 Caddie, each with plenty of reading material, while the boys sat up front. Just as Ansel and Jim were camera buddies, Virginia and I were book buddies. Their cameras and tripods stashed in the trunk, Jim drove and Ansel navigated, an open bag of cookies and a sack of hard candies between them.
The men followed every devious route and back road possible, so that what should have been a three-hour trip often took most of a day. They did not need much of an excuse to pull over, get out, walk around, and confer with great seriousness about a scene’s photographic possibilities. Without saying a word, Virginia and I would just pick up our books and continue where we had left off.
Often we would wend our way up Highway One all the way to the city. Ansel loved to stop for lunch at Duarte’s, an old tavern in Pescadero that had knotty-pine walls and a bar with pool tables and served artichoke soup and homemade olallieberry pie à la mode.
Home base in San Francisco was the house of Otto and Sue Meyer, steadfast friends of Ansel and Virginia’s who lived just two doors away from Ansel’s old family abode in West Clay Park, on Twenty-fourth Avenue. With affection, Ansel dubbed their place the Meyerhof; he had recuperated there for two weeks following his open-heart surgery in 1979. 6 The Meyers always welcomed Ansel and Virginia and their supporting cast with open arms. As president of Paul Masson Vineyards, Otto had hired Ansel in 1961 to document the building of the company’s new champagne cellars in Saratoga. He was a longtime trustee of the Friends of Photography and a pillar of the San Francisco opera community. By all appearances the spark plug that kept Otto’s engine going, Sue was a leader in the arts community, having blazed the trail for the acceptance of contemporary crafts as art in San Francisco with her groundbreaking Fort Mason gallery Meyer, Breier, Weiss, next door to the famous vegetarian restaurant Greens. 7
One morning at breakfast in late 1982, when the Alinders and Adamses were all comfortably ensconced at the Meyers’, Ansel suggested that he and Jim go out and make a day of it. Agreed. Virginia and I snuck sly smiles at each other, already
Some friendships combined work and pleasure. After wrestling with the Museum Sets and finally completing them in 1982, Ansel began once more to hear the call of photography, which for him meant the call of the outdoors. 4 He had always enjoyed having companions along while he photographed in the Sierra, on the trail with Cedric or other members of the club. Sometimes on a rare free Saturday or Sunday, when the quiet of his house proved too much for him to bear, Ansel would call Jim to ask if he would like to go photographing. Ansel and Jim had become good friends by this time, seeing themselves as comrades under the dark cloth, so to speak, although neither was using a view camera. Ansel knew that since he assumed the leadership of the Friends, Jim had had little time for his own photography and welcomed any chance to expose some rolls. Together, they drove over most of the roads of Monterey County, stopping when either one saw something he liked. 5
On our periodic trips to San Francisco, Virginia and I would take the backseat of Ansel’s 1977 Caddie, each with plenty of reading material, while the boys sat up front. Just as Ansel and Jim were camera buddies, Virginia and I were book buddies. Their cameras and tripods stashed in the trunk, Jim drove and Ansel navigated, an open bag of cookies and a sack of hard candies between them.
The men followed every devious route and back road possible, so that what should have been a three-hour trip often took most of a day. They did not need much of an excuse to pull over, get out, walk around, and confer with great seriousness about a scene’s photographic possibilities. Without saying a word, Virginia and I would just pick up our books and continue where we had left off.
Often we would wend our way up Highway One all the way to the city. Ansel loved to stop for lunch at Duarte’s, an old tavern in Pescadero that had knotty-pine walls and a bar with pool tables and served artichoke soup and homemade olallieberry pie à la mode.
Home base in San Francisco was the house of Otto and Sue Meyer, steadfast friends of Ansel and Virginia’s who lived just two doors away from Ansel’s old family abode in West Clay Park, on Twenty-fourth Avenue. With affection, Ansel dubbed their place the Meyerhof; he had recuperated there for two weeks following his open-heart surgery in 1979. 6 The Meyers always welcomed Ansel and Virginia and their supporting cast with open arms. As president of Paul Masson Vineyards, Otto had hired Ansel in 1961 to document the building of the company’s new champagne cellars in Saratoga. He was a longtime trustee of the Friends of Photography and a pillar of the San Francisco opera community. By all appearances the spark plug that kept Otto’s engine going, Sue was a leader in the arts community, having blazed the trail for the acceptance of contemporary crafts as art in San Francisco with her groundbreaking Fort Mason gallery Meyer, Breier, Weiss, next door to the famous vegetarian restaurant Greens. 7
One morning at breakfast in late 1982, when the Alinders and Adamses were all comfortably ensconced at the Meyers’, Ansel suggested that he and Jim go out and make a day of it. Agreed. Virginia and I snuck sly smiles at each other, already
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