Re-imaging Adams - - So Cool

"Ansel Adams in Our Time" at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts 2019 - Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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

Ansel Adams "Mexican Boy, 1948" Detail, Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

​
​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. 

Ansel Adams "Ferns" Detail, Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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

Ansel Adams, "Freeway Interchange, LA, 1967" Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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

Alberto Morell, "Tent-Camera Image on Ground, View of Mount Moran" 2011, Detail © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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.
​

Mitch Epstein, "Altamont Pass Wind Farm, CA" 2007, Detail Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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.
​

Lucas Foglia, "Beach Restoration after El Nino Waves, 2016" Detail Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

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."
​

Laura McPhee "Midsummer, 2008" Detail, Copyright © 2019, Evelyn R Swett Photography

​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.