Ansel Adams Quotes
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
Ansel Adams, 1902-1984, Photographer, Quoted in Vince Taylor, Letter to Forest Supporters, September 21, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Discussing pollution that kept New York City beaches closed:
Preserving the environment in a modern state involves restrictions of various kinds ranging from limits on land use to prohibiting of hunting of endangered species. Each of these limits individual freedom somewhat. This is the main reason that there is a significant anti-environmentalism movement. Most laws and regulations restrict human freedom somewhat, and generally democratic societies limit these to the very necessary. But with environmentalism, more regulation is usually better environmentalism. Therefore such regulation is always a trade off with some human freedom.
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed an exacting system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a deeply technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed during exposure, negative development, and printing. The resulting clarity and depth of such images characterized his photography.
