Editing Ansel Adams (section)

==Early life==
===Birth===
Adams was born in the [[Fillmore District, San Francisco|Fillmore District of San Francisco]], the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray. He was named after his uncle, Ansel Easton. His mother's family came from [[Baltimore]], where his maternal grandfather had a successful freight-hauling business but lost his wealth investing in failed mining and real estate ventures in Nevada.{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 4}} The Adams family came from New England, having migrated from the north of Ireland during the early 19th century. His paternal grandfather founded a very prosperous lumber business that his father later managed. Later in life, Adams condemned the industry his grandfather worked in for cutting down many of the [[Sequoia sempervirens|redwood forests]].{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 4}}

===Early childhood===
One of Adams's earliest memories was watching the smoke from the fires caused by the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake]]. Then four years old, Adams was uninjured in the initial shaking but was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an [[aftershock]] three hours later, breaking and scarring his nose. A doctor recommended that his nose be reset once he reached maturity, but it remained crooked and necessitated [[mouth breathing]] for the rest of his life.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 2}}<ref name="Sierra Club 2008a">{{cite web | author = Sierra Club | year = 2008 | url = http://www.sierraclub.org/history/anseladams/ | title = Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club: About Ansel Adams | publisher = Sierra Club | access-date = February 2, 2010 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100201212325/http://www.sierraclub.org/history/anseladams/ | archive-date = February 1, 2010 | url-status = dead}}</ref>

In 1907, his family moved {{convert|2|mi|km|0}} west to a new home near the [[Sea Cliff, San Francisco|Seacliff]] neighborhood of San Francisco, just south of the [[Presidio of San Francisco|Presidio Army Base]].<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/ansel-adams-boyhood-san-francisco-house-3201869.php | title = Ansel Adams' boyhood San Francisco house | last = Whittington | first = Geoff | date = January 24, 2010 | work = San Francisco Chronicle | access-date = April 20, 2010 | location = San Francisco, CA | archive-date = May 5, 2010 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100505195553/http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-24/real-estate/17835300_1_ansel-adams-bath-yosemite-national-park | url-status = live }}</ref> The home had a "splendid view" of the [[Golden Gate]] and the [[Marin Headlands]].{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 6}}

Adams was a [[Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder#ADHD-PH|hyperactive]] child and prone to frequent sickness and [[Hypochondriasis|hypochondria]]. He had few friends, but his family home and surroundings on the heights facing the Golden Gate provided ample childhood activities. He had little patience for games or sports; but he enjoyed the [[Nature#Aesthetics and beauty|beauty of nature]] from an early age, collecting bugs and exploring [[Lobos Creek]] all the way to [[Baker Beach]] and the sea cliffs leading to [[Lands End, San Francisco|Lands End]],{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 6}}{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 14}} "San Francisco's wildest and rockiest coast, a place strewn with shipwrecks and rife with landslides."<ref>{{cite web | url = http://parksconservancy.org/visit/park-sites/lands-end.html | title = Lands End | publisher = Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy | access-date = April 19, 2010 | location = San Francisco, CA | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100412105138/http://www.parksconservancy.org/visit/park-sites/lands-end.html | archive-date = April 12, 2010 | url-status = live}}</ref>

===Early education===
Adams's father had a three-inch telescope, and they enthusiastically shared the hobby of astronomy, visiting the [[Lick Observatory]] on [[Mount Hamilton (California)|Mount Hamilton]] together. His father later served as the paid secretary-treasurer of the [[Astronomical Society of the Pacific]], from 1925 to 1950.<ref>{{cite journal | title = In Memoriam, Charles Hitchcock Adams 1868–1951 | last = Aitken | first = R. G. | year = 1951 | journal = Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific | volume = 63 | issue = 375 | pages = 284–286 | bibcode = 1951PASP...63..283A | doi = 10.1086/126396| s2cid = 123406530 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

Charles Adams's business suffered large financial losses after the death of his father in the aftermath of the [[Panic of 1907]]. Some of the loss was due to his uncle Ansel Easton and [[Cedric Wright]]'s father George secretly having sold their shares of the company, "knowingly providing the controlling interest" to the [[Big Five (Hawaii)|Hawaiian Sugar Trust]] for a large amount of money.{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 40}} By 1912, the family's [[standard of living]] had dropped sharply.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 9}}

Adams was dismissed from several private schools for being restless and inattentive, so when he was 12, his father decided to remove him from school. For the next two years he was educated by private tutors, his aunt Mary, and his father. Mary was a devotee of [[Robert G. Ingersoll]], a 19th-century agnostic and [[women's suffrage]] advocate, so Ingersoll's teachings were important to his upbringing.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 11}} During the [[Panama–Pacific International Exposition]] in 1915, his father insisted that he spend part of each day studying the exhibits as part of his education.{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 18}} He eventually resumed, and completed, his formal education by attending the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School, graduating from the eighth grade on June 8, 1917. During his later years, he displayed his diploma in the guest bathroom of his home.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 276}}

His father raised him to follow the ideas of [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]: to live a modest, moral life guided by a social responsibility to man and nature.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 11}} Adams had a loving relationship with his father, but he had a distant relationship with his mother, who did not approve of his interest in photography.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 52}} The day after her death in 1950, Ansel had a dispute with the undertaker when choosing the casket in which to bury her. He chose the cheapest in the room, a $260 coffin that seemed the least he could purchase without doing the job himself. The undertaker remarked, "Have you no respect for the dead?" Adams replied, "One more crack like that and I will take Mama elsewhere."{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 45}}

===Youth===

Adams became interested in playing the piano at age 12 after hearing his 16-year-old neighbor [[Henry Cowell]] play on the Adams' piano, and he taught himself to play and read music.<ref name="Turnage 2018">{{Cite journal | last = Turnage | first = William A. | author-link = William Turnage | title = Adams, Ansel (1902–1984), photographer and environmentalist | journal = American National Biography | volume = 1 | doi = 10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1701243 | year = 2000}}</ref> Cowell, who later became a well-known avant-garde composer, gave Adams some lessons.{{sfn|Hammond|Adams|2002|p=3}} Over the next decade,{{sfn|Hammond|Adams|2002|p=4}} three music teachers pushed him to develop technique and discipline, and he became determined to pursue a career as a classical pianist.{{Sfn|Alinder|1996|p=11}}

[[File:Photography during the First World War MH29845 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Kodak Brownie|Kodak No 1 Brownie Model B box camera]], the first camera that Adams was given at age 14 while on a family trip to [[Yosemite National Park]], California in 1916{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 53}}]]

Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family.<ref>{{cite book | last = Stillman | first = Andrea G. | title = 400 Photographs | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 2007 | location = New York City | page = 12 | isbn = 978-0-316-11772-2}}</ref> He wrote of his first view of the valley: "the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it ''was'' glorious.... One wonder after another descended upon us.... There was light everywhere.... A new era began for me." His father gave him his first camera during that stay, an [[Eastman Kodak]] [[Brownie (camera)|Brownie box camera]], and he took his first photographs with his "usual hyperactive enthusiasm".{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 53}} He returned to Yosemite on his own the next year with better cameras and a tripod. During the winters of 1917 and 1918, he learned basic darkroom technique while working part-time for a San Francisco photograph finisher.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 36}}

Adams contracted the Spanish flu during the [[1918 flu pandemic]], from which he needed several weeks to recuperate. He read a book about lepers and became obsessed with cleanliness; he was afraid to touch anything without immediately washing his hands afterwards. Over the objections of his doctor, he prevailed on his parents to take him back to Yosemite, and the visit cured him of his disease and compulsions.{{sfn|Adams|Alinder|1985|pp=54–55}}

Adams avidly read photography magazines, attended camera club meetings, and went to photography and art exhibits. He explored the [[Sierra Nevada (U.S.)|High Sierra]] during summer and winter with retired geologist and amateur ornithologist Francis Holman, whom he called "Uncle Frank". Holman taught him camping and climbing; however, their shared ignorance of safe climbing techniques such as [[belaying]] almost led to disaster on more than one occasion.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 23}}

[[File:Best studio Yosemite 1920s.gif|thumb|Harry Best standing in front of his studio, {{circa}} 1922–1925<ref>{{cite web | title = Ansel Adams Gallery Rehabilitation | url = https://www.nps.gov/yose/getinvolved/adams_gallery.htm | website = Yosemite National Park | publisher = U. S. National Park Service | access-date = March 5, 2019 | archive-date = March 6, 2019 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190306043616/https://www.nps.gov/yose/getinvolved/adams_gallery.htm | url-status = live }}</ref>]]

While in Yosemite, Adams had need of a piano to practice on. A ranger introduced him to landscape painter Harry Best, who kept a studio home in Yosemite and lived there during the summers. Best allowed Adams to practice on his old [[square piano]]. Adams grew interested in Best's daughter Virginia and later married her.{{sfn|Spaulding|1998|pp=42–43}} On her father's death in 1936, Virginia inherited the studio and continued to operate it until 1971. The studio is now known as the Ansel Adams Gallery and remains owned by the Adams family.<ref>{{cite web | title = Gallery History | url = http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-gallery-in-yosemite/gallery-history/ | publisher = Ansel Adams Gallery | access-date = March 1, 2019 | archive-date = March 2, 2019 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190302090843/http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-gallery-in-yosemite/gallery-history/ | url-status = live }}</ref>

===Sierra Club and piano work===
At age 17, Adams joined the Sierra Club,<ref name="Sierra Club 2010">{{cite web | url = http://www.sierraclub.org/education/leconte/history.asp | title = Environmental Education – LeConte Memorial Lodge | publisher = Sierra Club | access-date = April 19, 2010 | location = San Francisco, CA | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100304081218/http://www.sierraclub.org/education/leconte/history.asp | archive-date = March 4, 2010 | url-status = live}}</ref> a group dedicated to protecting the wild places of the earth, and he was hired as the summer caretaker of the Sierra Club visitor facility in Yosemite Valley, the [[LeConte Memorial Lodge]], from 1920 to 1923.<ref name="Sierra Club 2010" /> He remained a member throughout his lifetime and served as a director, as did his wife. He was first elected to the Sierra Club's board of directors in 1934 and served on the board for 37 years.<ref name="Sierra Club 2008a" /> Adams participated in the club's annual [[High Trips]], later becoming assistant manager and official photographer for the trips.<ref name="Sierra Club 2008a" /> He is credited with several [[first ascent]]s in the Sierra Nevada.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Secor | first1 = R. J. | title = The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes, Trails | date = 2009 | publisher = The Mountaineers Books | isbn = 978-1-59485-481-1 | pages = 377, 409, 414}}</ref>

During his twenties, most of his friends had musical associations, particularly violinist and amateur photographer [[Cedric Wright]], who became his best friend as well as his philosophical and cultural mentor. Their shared philosophy was from [[Edward Carpenter]]'s ''Towards Democracy'', a literary work which endorsed the pursuit of beauty in life and art. For several years, Adams carried a pocket edition with him while at Yosemite;{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 47}} and it became his personal philosophy as well. He later stated, "I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate."{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 9}}

During summer, Adams would enjoy a life of hiking, camping, and photographing; and the rest of the year he worked to improve his piano playing, perfecting his piano technique and musical expression. He also gave piano lessons for extra income that allowed him to purchase a grand piano suitable to his musical ambitions.{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 27}} Adams was still planning a career in music. He felt that his small hands limited his repertoire,{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 28}} but qualified judges considered him a gifted pianist.<ref name="Szarkowski 2018">{{Cite encyclopedia | url = https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ansel-Adams-American-photographer | title = Ansel Adams {{!}} American photographer|last=Szarkowski|first=John|date=April 15, 2018|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=November 27, 2018}}</ref> However, when he formed the Milanvi Trio with a violinist and a dancer, he proved a poor accompanist.{{Sfn |Alinder|1996| p = 48}} It took seven more years for him to conclude that, at best, he might become only a concert pianist of limited range, an accompanist, or a piano teacher.{{Sfn |Adams|Alinder|1985| p = 27}}