Editing Ansel Adams (section)

===Group f/64===
{{Main|Group f/64}}
In 1932, Adams helped form the anti-pictorialist Group f/64, a loose and relatively short-lived association of like-minded "straight" or "pure" photographers on the West Coast whose members included Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. The modernist group favored sharp focus—f/64 being a very small aperture setting that gives great depth of field on large-format view cameras—contact printing, precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects, and the use of the entire tonal range of a photograph.<ref name="Turnage 2018" /><ref name="Szarkowski 2018" /><ref name="Morgan 2018" /><ref>{{Cite book | publisher = Philip's | isbn = 978-0-19-954609-1 | title = World Encyclopedia | chapter = Adams, Ansel | access-date = November 26, 2018 | chapter-url = http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199546091.001.0001/acref-9780199546091-e-96 | doi = 10.1093/acref/9780199546091.001.0001 | year = 2004 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/worldencyclopedi00oxfo }}</ref><ref name="Soccio 2016">{{cite web | last = Soccio | first = Lisa | title = Ansel Adams | work = International Center of Photography | access-date = July 30, 2018 | date = March 3, 2016 | url = https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/ansel-adams | archive-date = November 30, 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20181130071849/https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/ansel-adams | url-status = live }}</ref>

Adams wrote the group's manifesto for their exhibition at the [[De Young Museum]]:
{{blockquote|Group {{f/}}64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are striving to define photography as an art-form by a simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods. The Group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of [technique], composition or ideas, derivative of any other art-form. The production of the "Pictorialist," on the other hand, indicates a devotion to principles of art, which are directly related to painting and the graphic arts. The members of Group {{f/}}64 believe that Photography, as an art-form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period of culture antedating the growth of the medium itself.{{Sfn | O'Toole|2010}}}}

The f/64 school met with opposition from the pictorialists, particularly [[William Mortensen]], who called their work "hard and brittle".{{sfn|Alinder|1996|pp=76–77}}<ref name="Lovejoy 2014">{{cite news | last1 = Lovejoy | first1 = Bess | title = The Photographer Who Ansel Adams Called the Anti-Christ | url = https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/photographer-who-ansel-adams-called-anti-christ-180953525/ | access-date = February 28, 2019 | work = Smithsonian | date = December 4, 2014 | archive-date = March 27, 2019 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190327184314/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/photographer-who-ansel-adams-called-anti-christ-180953525/ | url-status = live }}</ref> Adams disliked the work of Mortensen and disliked him personally, referring to him as the "Anti-Christ". The purists were friends with prominent historians, and their influence led to the exclusion of Mortensen from histories of photography.<ref name="Lovejoy 2014" /><ref>{{cite news | last1 = Appleford | first1 = Steve | title = Pictorialist William Mortensen, reviled by Ansel Adams, gets new respect | url = https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-william-mortensen-20150311-story.html | access-date = February 28, 2019 | work = Los Angeles Times | date = March 11, 2015 | archive-date = February 28, 2019 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190228065938/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-william-mortensen-20150311-story.html | url-status = live }}</ref>

Adams later developed this purist approach into the Zone System.<ref name="Soccio 2016" />