Re-imaging Adams - So Cool - Let's Reframe: By Degrees

Re-imaging Adams - - So Cool

2/11/2019

Last week I saw
"Ansel Adams in Our Time,"
an exhibit at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
It was totally cool.

It is clear
that Adams witnessed
and understood a whole lot more
about the human condition than his reverent
landscapes had ever revealed to
me on their own.

Check out
this intimate portrait
of a Mexican boy, this stunning
close-up of a fern, and this panoramic
view of human development.

It gave me
the chills. Adams
understood our reciprocal
relationship with the natural world and
the fragility of our co-
dependence.

There I was,
reflected in the glass,
paying attention to these imaginative
re-imagings of Ansel Adams's world. In Abelardo
Morell's exploration of the microcosmos and the macrocosmos
I saw the tenuous balance between individual
rights and collective responsibility
necessary in any
democracy.

And I laughed
when I saw myself in Mitch
Epstein's "Altamont Pass Wind Farm."
So funny how we play games with
each other, with nature and
with ourselves.

And,
I loved Luis
Faglio's reflection about beach
restoration, how it celebrates the "hope
and the irony that we are able
to move sand."

Strange,
to feel at home
in a large, meandering
exhibit in an even larger museum,
but the message of these works was close
to home. Yes, we can move sand. Yes,
lupine does grow after a fire.Yes,
we have the power to renew
not just ourselves, but the
planet as well.
Yes.

Re-imaging Adams - - So Cool

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