Harry Best and Sarah Anne Rippey, are married in Yosemite on July 28th, 1901. After the ceremony, they stopped the incoming stagecoach to serve champagne & help celebrate with them. (Rumor has it that several men were courting Ms. Rippey that summer and Harry’s success lay in his persistence and having sent back to San Francisco for an engagement ring). (source)

The Bests opened their seasonal studio in a tent in Yosemite Valley. Thereafter, Harry and Anne returned to Yosemite each summer, building the original Studio in the Old Yosemite Village in 1904. (source)

Ansel Adams is born at 114 Maple Street in San Francisco, California. He was the only child of Olive Bray and Charles Hitchcock Adams. Charles was an insurance broker and married Olive in 1896.

She would grow up spending summers in Yosemite with her family until 1926 when they took up full-time residence in Yosemite Valley.

His grandfather Charles E. Bray and Aunt Mary Bray come to live with his family. That same year Ansel’s father's parents' home in Atherton, California, burned to the ground.

He begins serious music study under the tutorship of Marie Butler.

With this pass, he “visits nearly every day.” Following this year, Ansel would leave regular schooling and begin to be tutored privately to continue his education.

Ansel convinced his parents to take a family vacation in Yosemite National Park, his first ever trip to the park. Once there he begins to photograph using a Brownie box camera that his father gave him, and begins what would be his deep connection with both the art of photography and Yosemite. He would return to visit Yosemite every year for the rest of his life.

This early opportunity gave him the chance to meet some of the great conservationists of the day, including William E. Colby the Sierra Club President, and Stephen T. Mather, first director of the National Park Service. Ansel continued working summers at the Sierra Club headquarters until 1924. He also starts to seriously pursue photography as more than just a hobby, and begins to "articulate his ideas about the potential of the medium.” He continues his piano studies with professional ambitions.

Ansel spends his second summer season in Yosemite where he meets Virginia Best in Best’s Studio, practicing on the piano they had available there. While in Yosemite he takes his first high-country trip into the Sierra with Francis “Uncle Frank” Holman and Mistletoe the burro.

He was later quoted saying, “I knew so little about photography then, it was a miracle I got anything. But that was the first time I realized how the print was going to look—what I now call visualization—and was actually thinking about the emotional effect of the image…I began to visualize the black rock and deep sky. I really wanted to give it a monumental, dark quality. So I used the last plate I had with a No. 29-F red filter…and got this exciting picture.” He used the term “visualization” to describe the photographer's pre-exposure determination of the visual and emotional qualities of the finished print. (source)

Recognizing his talent, Bender encourages Ansel Adams to issue a collection of his mountain photographs, taken during his many excursions to hike and climb in the area of Yosemite National Park. Bender was able to connect Ansel to prominent patrons of the arts through this collection, as well as poets and writers like Robinson Jeffers and Mary Austin who he would develop friendships with.

They were married in the newly constructed Best Studio in the “new village” in Yosemite Valley.

He visited to photograph for a book project with Mary Austin about the Taos Pueblo. While there he meets Georgia O’Keeffe and John Marin at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s estate. Virginia purchases local Native American jewelry and crafts to sell in Best’s Studio, beginning gallery partnerships that exist into the present day.

Ansel writes words, picks music and volunteers to act as the leading role in The Bracebridge Dinner, a Christmas production that becomes an annual event in Yosemite.

After meeting Paul Strand in Taos, he became committed after understanding Strand’s total dedication to creative photography and viewing his work. Ansel decided to build a home and a photography studio at 131 24th Ave in San Francisco, adjoining his parents’ home.

He also begins writing a photography column for the Fortnightly Review and reviews exhibitions by Edward Weston and Eugene Atget at the DeYoung Museum.

“The number designates a very small lens aperture capable of producing an image with maximum definition. The group’s advocacy of “straight” photography had a revolutionary influence on attitudes in the world of photography.” (source)

Virginia Adams had already been a board member since 1932. The Adams tie with what was to become the nation’s best-known conservation organization began to assume significance around 1928 when Ansel served as a guide and official photographer on the club’s annual high-country outings.He also began publishing a series of technical articles, "An Exhibition of my Photographic Technique,” inCamera Craft.

He also publishes his “Personal Credo” inCamera Craft,and teaches at the Art Student League Workshop in San Francisco.

They take over the management and proprietorship of Best’s Studio. A devastating fire in the workroom destroys 20% of Ansel’s negatives and damages his negative of Monolith, The Face of Half Dome.

He goes on photography trips with Edward Weston in the High Sierra, and with artist Georgia O’Keeffe and patron of the arts David McAlpin through the Southwest United States. He hires Rondal Partridge as his photographic assistant through 1940.

It was subsidized by Sierra Club member, Walter Starr, as a memorial tribute to a son who had died on a climb in the Minarets. He takes O’Keeffe and McAlpin through Yosemite and the High Sierra explorations and photographs with Edward Weston in the Owens Valley.

During this year he also meets Beaumont and Nancy Newhall in New York.

Ansel was later quoted saying, “With what one may call arrogant modesty, I think many of my pictures…have an excitement in them which commands more attention than if they were the same scene not composed or adequately printed…I think the pictures I had of the Kings Canyon-Sequoia region did have a helpful effect in getting Congress to pass the bill. But no one will ever know whether it was one percent or five percent, or whether it was entirely imaginary.” (source)

It is one of the first photo education programs in the country. Ansel also organizes and edits the exhibition forThe Pageant of Photographyheld at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. He helps to found the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York with Newhall and McAlpin.

He also photographsThe Tetons and Snake RiverandLeaves, Mount Rainier.

He begins creatingBorn Free and Equal,a photo-essay on the loyalist Japanese-Americans interned there.

Paul Strand visits Yosemite and Ansel publishes the bookBorn Free and Equal(New York: U.S. Camera) alongside an exhibition of the photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition was closed after approximately three weeks, and the books were removed from shelves, presumably under direction from the national government. At the time the United States was still at war with Japan.

PhotographsNevada Fall Rainbow,Yosemite National Park,White Branches, Mono LakeandMount McKinley and Wonder Lake.

His Guggenheim Fellowship is renewed, and the Sierra Club publishesPortfolio Iwith 12 Ansel Adams’ photographs.

He begins a lifelong friendship with Dr. Edwin Land, a co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation.

Ansel also hires Pirkle Jones as his photographic assistant through 1953. (source)

During the conference, the idea to create a publication focused on creative photography is born.

He creates the photograph ofMaroon Bells.He also exhibits at the George Eastman House in Rochester and helps to foundAperture, as a journal of creative photography with the Newhalls, Minor White and others.

He would go on to finish his Bachelors of Science at Fresno State.

The idea for the exhibition grew out of a discussion between Ansel, Virginia and Nancy, in searching for ways to educate the broader public about conservation.

Don Worth becomes his photographic assistant through 1960 and Gerry Sharpe works on special projects with Ansel through the 1960s.

He receives his third Guggenheim Fellowship, and publishesThe Islands of Hawaiiwith text by Edward Joesting. Ansel is presented with the Brehm Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to photography by the Rochester Institute of Technology.

He had protested the work alongside Sierra Club President David Brower and others in a long campaign. Despite protests the National Park Service built the new road. In the “Tenaya Tragedy!!!” Ansel wrote: “I am an artist who also appreciated science and engineering, and I know we can’t keep everything in a glass case—with the keys given only to a privileged few. Nevertheless, I want people to experience the magic of wildness; there is no use fooling ourselves that nature with a slick highway running through it is any longer wild….While the National Park Service is open to most severe criticism in this Tenaya Lake road matter, so are the conservationists, who should have been alert to possible damage. I, personally, must assume my share of the blame because I failed to do my part before most of the damage was accomplished.” (source)

He moderates a series of five films for television,Photography, the Inclusive Art, directed by Robert Katz.

This series of exhibits toured both nationally and internationally. He also publishes the bookThis is the American Earth, based on the earlier exhibition, with text by Nancy Newhall.

While working there he assisted in the development of the Sunrise High Sierra Camp. He meets Jeanne Falk.

DespiteMoon and Half Domegoing on to become one of Ansel Adams’ best-known works, it was originally published on their wedding announcement.

Over the next two decides he would produce in that studio darkroom most of the fine prints made during his career. He publishesDeath Valley and the Creek Called FurnaceandThese We Inherit; The Parklands of America.

Michael was attending medical school there at the time.

His photos are published in the President’s report,A More Beautiful America. Major exhibitionAnsel Adams: The Redwood Empireis held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

He also receives the Conservation Service Award from the U.S. Department of Interior.

He receives the Progress Medal from the Photographic Society of America.

Ansel receives the Chubb Fellowship from Yale University. He also publishes The Tetons and the Yellowstone and revised edition of Basic Photo Series 1: The Camera and Lens.

The name change was to reflect the gallery’s primary focus of photography, and the powerful legacy that Ansel had on photography and environmental conservation. Jeanne operated the gallery as Michael maintained a medical practice in Fresno California at the time. She would continue to manage it for the next 30 years.

He publishes a monograph, Ansel Adams, edited by Liliane De Cock. Ted Orland becomes his photographic assistant until 1974.

Major exhibition titled Photographs by Ansel Adams, initiated and circulated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art–later it will travel to Europe and Russia through 1977.

Ansel receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Ansel publishes Singular Images and Images 1923-1974. Andrea Gray becomes Ansel’s executive assistant until 1980 and Alan Ross becomes his photographic assistant until 1979, and begins printing his Special Edition Photographs.

He receives an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from that university.

However the 3,000 photographs ordered by December 31st will take the next three years to print.

He begins an exclusive publishing agreement with the New York Graphic Society, a division of Little Brown and Company. Publishes Photographs of the Southwest.

He travels to Europe for the second Photography Festival in Arles and photographs Scotland, Switzerland and France. He lectures in London, Tucson, Los Angeles and San Diego. He has a major exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

With Virginia, he endows a curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art in honor of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. CCP organizes and circulates exhibition Photographs of the Southwest 1928-1968. He begins a complete revision of his technical books with the collaboration of Robert Baker.

He is elected as Honorary Vice President of the Sierra Club. Selected as an honorary member of the Moscow Committee of Graphic Artists, Photography Section.

It leads to a significant expansion of interest in collecting fine-art photography. Ansel Adams’ prints account for some half of the total dollar value of photography sales in the United States during this year.

He has a major retrospective exhibitionAnsel Adams and the West, at the Museum of Modern Art. He is the subject of Time Magazine's cover story.

He receives the first Ansel Adams Award for Conservation given by the Wilderness Society. He publishes The New Ansel Adams Photography Series Book 1,The Camera. ExhibitionAnsel Adams: Photographs of the American Westis organized by The Friends of Photography for the USCIA and circulated through 1983 in India, The Middle East and Africa.

King Carl XVI of Sweden presents Ansel with the second Hassalbad Gold Medal Award. He is named Honored Photographer at the national meeting for the Society for Photographic Education.

He publishes Book 2 in his revised technical series,The Negativewith The New York Graphic Society and three posters, the first of a series.Ansel Adams: Photographeran hours-long biographical film is co-produced by Andre Gray and John Huszar for Film America. A mural-sized print ofMoonrise Hernandez, New Mexicois sold for $71,500 at auction–a record high for creative photography.

Guests included Senator Alan Cranston, pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy and congressman Leon Panetta. He is presented with the Decoration of Commander in the Order of the Arts and Letters, the highest cultural award given by the French government to a foreigner. Two exhibitions, The Unknown Ansel Adams and Eightieth Birthday Retrospective, honor the event at The Friends Gallery and the Monterey Museum of Art.

He meets with President Regan on environmental concerns. He is elected as an honorary member in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

A commemorative exhibition and memorial celebration are held in Carmel. He is unanimously elected as an honoree of the International Photography Hall of Fame. Three posters and a calendar are published by the New York Graphic Society. Ansel Adams 1902-1984 is published by The Friends of Photography.

It draws around 6,000 viewers a day and totalling 650K viewers in 4 months.

It is organized and guest-curated by John Szarkowski, director emeritus of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). It is part of the centennial celebration events to commemorate Ansel Adams 100th birthday and his legacy. It goes on to tour nationally and internationally for the next two years to Chicago, London, Berlin, Los Angeles and New York City. (source)

It is written and edited by John Szarkowski, who organized the exhibition.

The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in partnership with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and “enhanced at the de Young by the addition of works from the permanent collection and new interpretive framing exploring Adams’ close connection to his hometown of San Francisco.” (source)

The first-day-of-issue event is held by The Ansel Adams Gallery, the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, USPS and the National Park Service, in Yosemite National Park near The Ansel Adams Gallery. Daniel Tangherlini of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors serves as the dedicating official, with speeches given by Matthew Adams, Alan Ross, Shelton Johnson, Cicely Muldoon and Scott Gediman. (source)