Digital BW, The Print

On Thursday 07 February 2002 09:57 pm, you wrote:

> > Dreams with a memory- Minor White remembered
> >
> > Minor White was one of the most influential,
> > inscrutable, and interesting photographers of all.
> >
> > *With Ansel Adams he developed the Zone System*, an
> > engineering methodology which (in the primitive days of
> > guesswork photography) allowed a photographer precise
> > control over the appearance of his image.
> >
> > Todd
>
> Todd,
> I fear that the above is a bit of revisionism.  While I
> agree that White probably helped perfect the Zone System,
> the below from Ansel's autobiography, off a website on
> the 'simplified Zone System'..... ******************
> The history of the zone system, or was Ansel Adams the
> sole inventor? Here's what Adams says in his
> Autobiography. The setting is the Art Center School, Los
> Angeles, 1940. "With the
> cooperation of Fred Archer, instructor in photographic
> portraiture, I set out to plan a way by which the
> students would learn the 'scales and chords' to achieve
> technical command of the medium. It took several weeks in
> refinement before I could teach it to the students. I
> called my codification of practical sensitometry the Zone
> System."
> *****************
>
> I still believe Ansel 'invented' the Zone System, I guess
> I was wrong about Weston, but I thought I remember
> something in the history about Weston and Adams
> perfecting it...ah well..
>
> Harvey Ferdschneider
> partner, SKID Photography, NYC
>
>
Also from Ansel Adams Autobiography:
	However , as much as I loved teaching, after a year at 
the School of Fine Arts I found myself in a struggle for 
enough time for my own work. Receiving the Guggenheim 
Fellowship in late 1946 tipped the balance, I could afford 
to use the next year to photograph for myself. My problem 
was to find another photography teacher to take my place. 
The Newhalls, knowing my dilemma, wrote and suggested their 
friend Minor White.
	Minor wrote of our first meeting in "Memorable Fancies":

"Ansel met me at the train yesterday. This morning in his 
class at the California School of Fine Arts the whole 
muddled business of exposure and development fell into 
place. This afternoon I started teaching his Zone System. 
Ansel did not know it, but his gift of photographic 
craftmanship was the celebration of a birthday."