Ansel Adams

Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams. But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.

Eleanor Callahan, whose ever-changing image became a sensitively nuanced chapter of photography history — composed of pictures taken over more than 50 years by her husband, Harry Callahan — died Tuesday in an Atlanta hospice. She was 95. The cause was cancer, said her daughter, Barbara Callahan. The couple met on a blind date in 1933, when Eleanor was a secretary at Chrysler Motors in Detroit and Harry was a clerk at the firm. They were married three years later, forging a remarkably close relationship that lasted until Harry's death in 1999 and produced hundreds of imaginatively composed black-and-white portraits.

This week in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the rounding up of Japanese Americans to protect the country "against espionage and against sabotage." Ten War Relocation Camps were built; ultimately, more than 100,000 people were interned in them. One of the camps was at Manzanar, and when Ansel Adams arrived with his cameras, he saw "a little city, well-governed and alive" in the shadow of Mt. Williamson.

To learn more For information on photography classes offered by the Ansel Adams Gallery, go to http://www.anseladams.com . The free photo walks are offered at 9 a.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and are limited to 15 people. The children's photo walk - which is open to adults - is offered only in summer. Call (209) 372-4413 to reserve space.

Breaking a silence it had maintained during a monthlong controversy, the leading archive housing Ansel Adams' photographs has disputed Rick Norsigian's claim that old-fashioned glass-plate negatives he bought at a garage sale in Fresno represent a "lost" chapter in the great nature photographer's career. "We have no reason to believe that these negatives are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams," said the statement issued Tuesday by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The bankrupt Fresno Metropolitan Museum has agreed to return six Ansel Adams photographs to his son, who objected to the items being sold to pay creditors. Adams' attorney, Rene Lastreto, said the famed nature photographer never intended for private collectors to hang those prints in their living rooms. The move is intended to settle a lawsuit by Michael Adams and his wife, Jeanne, who gave the prints to the museum but maintained they did not give permission for their sale.

In his younger days, John Sexton's world was that of engines and grease, speed and danger. While attending high school, Sexton usually spent his spare time working on the pit crew of a professional drag racer. The idea of making a living by recording that world through a photographic lens hadn't occurred to him. And few would have guessed that Sexton would one day evolve into one of the best-known art photographers in America.

Almost as an apology, Ansel Adams told viewers of his stunning photographs that he printed them in a manner that may have distorted reality. Adams did so to recall for himself the personal experience and emotion that he felt at the time he shot the pictures. He hoped that at least a few of those who saw his photos could experience some of the same emotion. The response to Adams' photos indicates that he was far too humble about the possible effect that they would have on the viewer.

Works from the three leading players in this summer's big art-photography controversy will be hung in a Los Angeles gallery on Saturday for a brief exhibition aimed at giving folks a chance to see what the hubbub is all about, and decide for themselves. One is Ansel Adams, America's greatest nature photographer, who'll be represented by about 20 prints — hand-developed and signed by Adams himself and guaranteed to be authentic by the Duncan Miller Gallery in West Los Angeles, which is putting on the show.

A wall painter for the Fresno school district who bought a cache of antique glass-plate photographic negatives at a garage sale 10 years ago laid out his case Tuesday that they were created by Ansel Adams early in his career, offering affirmations from photographic and forensic experts he had hired. In a Beverly Hills gallery packed with reporters and photographers, Rick Norsigian and the Beverly Hills law firm that is helping him market prints made from the negatives (and promote a documentary about his find)

"Great shot," my friend said. "Yeah, my Canon G10 is really smart. " After two years of mumbling, "Shutter speed, ISO -- I don't know," as I put my camera in auto (or "idiot-proof") mode, it seemed time for me to know as much about photography as my camera knew. So recently I headed to Yosemite National Park and the Ansel Adams Gallery, which offers free camera walks, as well as photo classes and multi-day workshops for a fee, taught by staff photographers. Many of the iconic Yosemite photos I adore were shot by Adams, who died in 1984, and I thought a lesson here would be the nearest thing to learning from the man himself.

Ending a legal dispute that began last summer, Rick Norsigian has agreed to stop using Ansel Adams' name, likeness, or the "Ansel Adams" trademark as he continues to sell prints and posters of Yosemite and coastal California that he has long contended document "lost negatives" shot by the great nature photographer. Norsigian has spent the last decade trying to prove that the 65 old-fashioned glass-plate negatives he bought at a Fresno garage sale were taken by Adams in the 1920s and 1930s and represent a previously missing chapter in the photographer's oeuvre.

Works from the three leading players in this summer's big art-photography controversy will be hung in a Los Angeles gallery on Saturday for a brief exhibition aimed at giving folks a chance to see what the hubbub is all about, and decide for themselves. One is Ansel Adams, America's greatest nature photographer, who'll be represented by about 20 prints — hand-developed and signed by Adams himself and guaranteed to be authentic by the Duncan Miller Gallery in West Los Angeles, which is putting on the show.

Breaking a silence it had maintained during a monthlong controversy, the leading archive housing Ansel Adams' photographs has disputed Rick Norsigian's claim that old-fashioned glass-plate negatives he bought at a garage sale in Fresno represent a "lost" chapter in the great nature photographer's career. "We have no reason to believe that these negatives are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams," said the statement issued Tuesday by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The case of the "lost" Ansel Adams negatives that purportedly are worth $200 million has turned into a public argument between Rick Norsigian , who found them at a Fresno garage sale 10 years ago, and the great photographer's family and former associates and leading art-photography dealers, who deny that Adams took them. The brouhaha might have been avoided had Norsigian, a wall-painter for the Fresno school district, taken the advice years ago of Adams biographer Jonathan Spaulding.

A wall painter for the Fresno school district who bought a cache of antique glass-plate photographic negatives at a garage sale 10 years ago laid out his case Tuesday that they were created by Ansel Adams early in his career, offering affirmations from photographic and forensic experts he had hired. In a Beverly Hills gallery packed with reporters and photographers, Rick Norsigian and the Beverly Hills law firm that is helping him market prints made from the negatives (and promote a documentary about his find)

Picture This About 150 guests convened in a see-through tent attached to the Fine Arts Gallery at UC Irvine on Saturday night--the first locals to get a look at some Ansel Adams photographs on display through February. The guests--school types, art types, business types--sipped champagne and cocktails at the tent site, circled the gallery rooms, then shuttled to the student center for dinner and a peek at another selection from the late photographer's prodigious oeuvre.

More than 40 years ago the late photographer laureate Ansel Adams shot pictures in scenic Owens Valley. But Adams wasn't focusing on the nature scenes that made him famous. He wanted to photograph the nature of man. His photos were taken behind the barbed wire of Manzanar, where 10,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them born in the United States, were held for the duration of World War II.

The bankrupt Fresno Metropolitan Museum has agreed to return six Ansel Adams photographs to his son, who objected to the items being sold to pay creditors. Adams' attorney, Rene Lastreto, said the famed nature photographer never intended for private collectors to hang those prints in their living rooms. The move is intended to settle a lawsuit by Michael Adams and his wife, Jeanne, who gave the prints to the museum but maintained they did not give permission for their sale.

In her sensuous and nearly abstract landscapes and flower paintings, Georgia O'Keeffe pioneered American modernism. In her diet, she practiced a pared-down and exacting approach as well. In fact, her eating habits -- emphasizing the simple and the organic as well as having Southwest inflections -- seem positively contemporary. "Miss O'Keeffe exhibited discriminating taste in all elements of her surroundings, so it is not surprising that she was very particular about the food she ate and the environment in which it was prepared," Margaret Wood, O'Keeffe's former companion and cook, wrote in her book "A Painter's Kitchen: Recipes From the Kitchen of Georgia O'Keeffe."