paired with a mustard-hued, short-sleeved sport shirt or one in a green and white Provençal print, loosely cinched at the neck with a choice of bolo ties. He owned four pairs of shoes: desert boots, lace-up canvas-and-rubber hiking boots, black dress shoes, and house slippers.
When he was photographing, he wore the respected uniform of a photographer’s vest, fitted with pockets of every size and shape to hold his light meter, miscellaneous filters, and a few horehound drops or wintergreen Lifesavers. In fact, he had two vests, one in khaki and the other in a more Anselesque shade of red. Of course, a white Stetson hat was his signature finishing touch for any occasion, substituted some years before for his black one. He had four hats—three in well-lived-in states of disrepair and one that we had bought him and he kept for dress occasions.
Ansel proudly wore a $29.95 digital wristwatch that kept time better than any fancy one and what was more, served as his personal edema measuring device. If the watchband was tight in the morning, he knew he had ingested too much salt the day before.
Ansel was never one for holidays. Christmas and birthdays as a child were not very cheering, and he especially hated New Year’s Eve, when just to spite convention, he would go to bed extra early. Come the next morning, of course, he would feel terrific and be ready to celebrate. He and Virginia had a long-standing tradition of giving an annual blowout on New Year’s Day. January 1 is the worst day of the year to give a party: half the world is hung over, and the other half is depressed because it had such a dreadful New Year’s Eve. The Adams festivities, a gigantic open house, began at four-thirty in the afternoon. This would be a working day for me, so I would arrive at three to help hostess. There were never invitations; people just knew, and hundreds showed up each year.
Ansel’s eightieth birthday, in 1982, was a community-wide affair. Having decided that the best celebration would be of his work, we arranged for exhibitions of his photographs to open in three different Monterey Peninsula venues. The Weston Gallery in Carmel mounted a “greatest hits” show; Jim curated The Unknown Ansel Adams , featuring a group of little-known or previously unexhibited photographs, at the Friends of Photography; and I assembled The Eightieth Birthday Retrospective for the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art.
All three premiered on Friday night, February 19. The streets were thronged with hundreds of people. As his birthday gift from the staff, I had a computerized electronic horn that could play fifty different tunes installed in his big old white Cadillac embellished with a “Save Mono Lake” bumper sticker. Ansel got a huge kick out of this toy, and after each opening, the streets in front jammed with people singing impromptu “Happy Birthday”s, he would drive musically away with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” or “The Marseillaise,” leaving smiles of astonishment in his wake. For Ansel, it was a grand evening.
His birthday dinner the next night was an extravaganza for two hundred, hosted by the Friends of Photography and organized by Jim and me. We wanted it to be an evening of great fun, leavened with the surprise bestowed on the birthday boy by the French Consul, of the title of Commander of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France. Toasts were offered by such luminaries as Richard Oldenburg, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Jehanne Salinger, a dear friend of Ansel’s for fifty years and mother of the famous Pierre.
The meal, cooked by Ansel’s favorite caterer, Michael Jones of Carmel’s A Moveable Feast, began with Ansel’s beloved sorrel soup and ended with an untraditional birthday cake. In full regalia, the marching band of a local high school escorted the cake grandly past the tables and presented it, ablaze with eighty candles, to Ansel. The cake was to
When he was photographing, he wore the respected uniform of a photographer’s vest, fitted with pockets of every size and shape to hold his light meter, miscellaneous filters, and a few horehound drops or wintergreen Lifesavers. In fact, he had two vests, one in khaki and the other in a more Anselesque shade of red. Of course, a white Stetson hat was his signature finishing touch for any occasion, substituted some years before for his black one. He had four hats—three in well-lived-in states of disrepair and one that we had bought him and he kept for dress occasions.
Ansel proudly wore a $29.95 digital wristwatch that kept time better than any fancy one and what was more, served as his personal edema measuring device. If the watchband was tight in the morning, he knew he had ingested too much salt the day before.
Ansel was never one for holidays. Christmas and birthdays as a child were not very cheering, and he especially hated New Year’s Eve, when just to spite convention, he would go to bed extra early. Come the next morning, of course, he would feel terrific and be ready to celebrate. He and Virginia had a long-standing tradition of giving an annual blowout on New Year’s Day. January 1 is the worst day of the year to give a party: half the world is hung over, and the other half is depressed because it had such a dreadful New Year’s Eve. The Adams festivities, a gigantic open house, began at four-thirty in the afternoon. This would be a working day for me, so I would arrive at three to help hostess. There were never invitations; people just knew, and hundreds showed up each year.
Ansel’s eightieth birthday, in 1982, was a community-wide affair. Having decided that the best celebration would be of his work, we arranged for exhibitions of his photographs to open in three different Monterey Peninsula venues. The Weston Gallery in Carmel mounted a “greatest hits” show; Jim curated The Unknown Ansel Adams , featuring a group of little-known or previously unexhibited photographs, at the Friends of Photography; and I assembled The Eightieth Birthday Retrospective for the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art.
All three premiered on Friday night, February 19. The streets were thronged with hundreds of people. As his birthday gift from the staff, I had a computerized electronic horn that could play fifty different tunes installed in his big old white Cadillac embellished with a “Save Mono Lake” bumper sticker. Ansel got a huge kick out of this toy, and after each opening, the streets in front jammed with people singing impromptu “Happy Birthday”s, he would drive musically away with “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” or “The Marseillaise,” leaving smiles of astonishment in his wake. For Ansel, it was a grand evening.
His birthday dinner the next night was an extravaganza for two hundred, hosted by the Friends of Photography and organized by Jim and me. We wanted it to be an evening of great fun, leavened with the surprise bestowed on the birthday boy by the French Consul, of the title of Commander of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France. Toasts were offered by such luminaries as Richard Oldenburg, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Jehanne Salinger, a dear friend of Ansel’s for fifty years and mother of the famous Pierre.
The meal, cooked by Ansel’s favorite caterer, Michael Jones of Carmel’s A Moveable Feast, began with Ansel’s beloved sorrel soup and ended with an untraditional birthday cake. In full regalia, the marching band of a local high school escorted the cake grandly past the tables and presented it, ablaze with eighty candles, to Ansel. The cake was to
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