Regarded as one of the greatest American photographers of the American West, Ansel Adams is best known for his landscape photographs of the Yosemite Valley. His experiences as a youth at Yosemite National Park would shape the direction of his life as an early nature-conservationist and world-renowned artist. Adams' family initially operated "Best's Studio," a photographic tent situated in the California Wilderness, which would later become the Ansel Adams Gallery, an establishment still in operation today. As Adams' name became synonymous with Yosemite, he began to collaborate with other iconic institutions within the park. Most notably, Adams worked closely with the Ahwahnee Hotel, publishing his photographs on the front covers of the ever-changing restaurant menus. This vintage print from the early 1950s appeared on the Winter 1953 menu, offering delectable fare such as Crabmeat cocktail Supreme and Lobster a la Newburg en casserole.

Ansel Easton Adams was born on February 20, 1902 in San Francisco, CA. Prodigious from the start, Adams left school at age 12 to become a well-regarded pianist. His photographic prowess was revealed in 1916 when he was given his first camera. He joined the environmental organization, the Sierra Club, in 1919, and spent the next four summers in Yosemite Valley working as a groundskeeper. It was there that his lifelong devotion to both landscape photography and Yosemite was born. He first published and exhibited his work at the club’s facilities in the early 1920s which propelled his early career and allowed him to pursue photography over piano. By the arrival of the 1930s, Adams was an established photographer, under the wing of an influential patron and brushing shoulders with other successful photographers such as Edward Weston. In 1932, Weston and Adams helped to found Group f/64, a collective of Bay Area photographers who were characterized by the unadulterated and crisp aesthetic of their images, the name derived from the aperture settings on their large format cameras. In 1940, Adams, alongside two others, helped to establish the new photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The following year he was contracted to photograph the National Parks and Indian reservations for a mural. During WWII, he switched his focus on the devastating internment of Japanese Americans. In the 1950s, Adams helped found the magazine Aperture, and returned to Yosemite to teach. He died in Monterey, California on April 22, 1984 and his ashes were scattered at Yosemite. His legacy on American landscape photography is immeasurable and remains influential to this day. His contributions to both photography and environmental conservation have garnered the highest and countless honors and awards; from being inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, becoming a Guggenheim fellow, and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His work belongs to major collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and continues to be shown in exhibitions today.