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Where Is Ansel Adams When We Need Him?
Saturday, November 5th, 2005 by RLR
From The Boston Globe
By Derrick Z. Jackson
ANSEL ADAMS came to the White House in 1975 to deliver a print of a photograph from Yosemite National Park desired by President Ford and Betty Ford. Adams, still smarting from President Nixon’s neglect of public lands, asked Ford to redefine the meaning of our parks, maintain their funding, and put a ”new emphasis on preservation and environmental responsibilities.”
In 1983, Adams met with President Reagan, and not to deliver a photograph. He was a vocal critic of Reagan’s rollbacks on environmental protection and preservation of wild areas. He said Reagan’s land policies were ones of ”rape, ruin, and run!” According to Adams, had the nation been under the vision in the 1930s of Reagan’s infamous Interior Secretary James Watt, Kings Canyon National Park would today ”look like part of the outskirts of Las Vegas.”
After Adams told Playboy magazine in 1983, ”I hate Reagan,” an embarrassed White House had the beloved photographer sit with Reagan for nearly an hour. Adams left unimpressed, borrowing from Oscar Wilde to say, ”They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
One can only guess what sparks would fly if Adams, who died in 1984, could witness President Bush’s resurrection of Reagan’s rape, ruin, and run.
Read more Ansel Adams