Ansel Adams AND Frank Lloyd Wright?!

Images of impossible beauty are swirling around in my head.

Many are colored in black and white. They are are, in fact, Ansel Adams' extreme black-and-white exposures of Yosemite and other Western landscapes. Twice, I've seen the current 138-piece exhibit of Adams' work at the Missoula Art Museum (http://www.missoulaartmuseum.org/index.php/ID/57d0e4036786886013093f0a535cd473/fuseaction/experience.detail.htm). My second visit includes a lovely little lecture from an art historian. And a crowd of more than 50 people turns out on an overcast afternoon to hear her say that Adams did have critics of his darkroom techniques.

Portrait of Ansel Adams, which first appeared in the 1950 Yosemite Field School yearbook. Photo by J. Malcolm Greany (print is in public domain, from the Wikimedia projects).

All I can say at this point is, Wow! And, critics schmitics! Adams is a man who pioneered the more-than-artful documentation of wild lands in this country. He helped not only put national parks and wilderness on the map but he also worked to get photography recognized as a true art form.  And last but certainly not least, his eye for composition, texture and range of tones is impeccable and should, in my opinion, be honored by anyone with even the slightest interest in photography. (http://www.missoulaartmuseum.org/index.php/ID/57d0e4036786886013093f0a535cd473/fuseaction/experience.detail.htm). Harrumph! So what if he did a darkroom burn-out of one of those mountain monograms -- the letters "LP" installed on a hill above Lone Pine, California, in his 1944 print "Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada." One of these prints is in the Missoula exhibit (I try but I can't find traces of the "LP") and another is on the Christie's auction Web site http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=1978689).

Art historian and crowd at MAM's Ansel Adams exhibit.

Says our historian, simple choices of composition are in themselves ways to manipulate images, not to mention all of the "enhancing," retouching and effects-adjusting techniques that now are available in the digital-camera/computer age. I find that I am delving into "edit" on my computer to straighten  images more often than not, as if I had been shooting on a rolling sea (?). And I occasionally crop and/or slightly adjust contrast or exposure. I do no color enhancing or retouching. I find that I can see those edits in others' photos from a mile away.


Just fyi, and like every amateur photographer, I also miss lots of good pictures. The girl, below, is blowing big pink bubble-gum bubbles as she looks away from Ansel Adams and down into the more-interesting (?) lobby of the museum. I shoot a dozen images BUT miss the irreverent orbs of goo.

Girl with bubble-gum, at the Ansel Adams showing.

The Missoula exhibit runs through April 15. There are no Montana photos here, by the way. Instead, the connection is an Ovando, Mt., couple -- he, retired as former Dell Computer chief financial officer, she, a photography buff. They own this collection of Adams photos and are sharing it with others. (A story on the couple is found at http://missoulian.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/article_cd6fbc04-f093-11e0-a433-001cc4c03286.html).

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Beautiful photographic images aren't the only things occupying me these days. Beautiful architectural ones --  from books and documentaries as well as from local houses and other buildings -- have become a bit of an obsession.

Just down the block from us in Hamilton, Mt., is a purported Frank Lloyd Wright house. Its prairie-style lines of hipped roof and board-and-batten horizontal siding speak of the Wright aesthetic. Currently, the house is unoccupied and for sale.

Prairie-style house on South 3rd Street, Hamilton, Mt.

Wright certainly was in the area during the early part of the 20th Century. A quarterly issue of the Frank Lloyd Wright Association's newsletter includes a long chapter on "Wright in the Bitter Root Valley of Montana."   He designed many fascinating projects.  Wright had a Midwest friend who was one of the promoters of orchard development in the Bitterroot Valley around 1910, including the Bitter Root Irrigation Company canal (also referred to as The Big Ditch). The canal was to furnish water from Lake Como north to a new town to be called Bitter Root, east of Hamilton. Wright was employed to lay out the town and plan buildings for this mountain valley, with profitable new orchards surrounding it. His most beautiful extremely horizontal building, the Bitter Root Inn, later burned down. It's reported than an apple blight plus an irrigation-company bankruptcy helped kill the orchard development.  Wright also got the job of designing bungalows for another model town south of Hamilton, around gorgeous Lake Como. It was linked to the so-called Apple Boom as well as to Midwest investors hoping also to escape from steamy Chicago summers. That, too, fizzled, although at least one prairie-style cabin remains.

I decide to tour our neighboring prairie-style house with a favorite local real-estate expert, and we see rooms full of beamed ceilings, magnificent woodwork, fireplaces and built-ins. I snap a few pictures.

Built-ins and dining room of our neighboring Wright-style house.

I go to the Ravalli County Museum at the Old Court House to confirm the Wright provenance and find that the Montana Historical and Architectural Inventory named the architect of record for this 1914 structure as "Frank Lloyd Wright School." Could that mean a design by Wright's many draftsmen and women in his Chicago studio? Or, is it a reference to Wright as designer, or to his style of design?

I look further. There are abundant newspaper stories naming Wright as the architect. And the Montana Historical and Architectural Inventory calls it a "house of primary historical significance" for "being an example of a style unique to the famous American architect." The house has "excellent integrity," it continues. As the only prairie-style building in Hamilton, it is, therefore, eligible for registration on the National Register of Historic Places, says the Inventory. "Local history contends that Wright actually designed this residence," it says. "However, veracity has never been completely confirmed. Prairie-style features are seen in the floor plan and massing with overhanging roof maintaining simple horizontal lines while the plan actually has reliefs. This smooth roofline and generous overhang develop the horizontal repose of the building.  Wright's buildings typically had a stronger horizontal which may indicate some interpretation on the contractor's part."  Hmmmmm?


I, meantime, am as hooked on Wright as on Ansel Adams. I stream online via Netflix (I'm enjoying a lack of TV in our house) the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary "Frank Lloyd Wright" (http://www.pbs.org/flw/filmmakers/index.html). I learn that he was quite a brilliant, difficult and controversial character. There's no mention of his early Montana visit in the film. I decide that I believe he was involved to some extent in our neighboring home but not the architect of record. I'd love to be proven wrong!