4 It helped launch the photographer from niche networks of photography enthusiasts, book collectors, and commercial patrons into a larger popular consciousness, paving the way for the better-known This is the American Earth (1960). My Camera in the National Parks contains many of Adams’s most celebrated landscapes, and the book is among the photographer’s first conservation-oriented texts intended for wide circulation. 2 Published in the wake of the Second World War, the book-and its cover image especially-repeated a well-worn dictum that harnessed the land as a symbol of American strength and resilience in the face of trying times. 1 In his introductory essay, Adams underscored the “moral sublime” of his images, framing the book as a testament to the significant role nature played in American society and calling on the public to engage with and protect their shared national heritage. It exemplifies Adams’s signature style as it was solidified in the process of the book’s production: an expansive depth of field, an elevated perspective, and a wide tonal range combine to create a powerful and optimistic expression of nature’s beauty.

Today, the image is emblematic of the photographer and his heroic view of the American landscape. On the dust jacket cover, Adams featured The Teton Range and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole National Monument, Wyoming (fig.1). In the fall of 1950, Ansel Adams (1902–1984) published My Camera in the National Parks, a large-format book containing thirty photo engravings depicting national parks and natural monuments across the United States and the territories of Alaska and Hawai‘i. © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust University of California, Riverside, Special Collections & University Archives. Yosemite National Park, CA: Virginia Adams Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950. Ansel Adams, cover of My Camera in the National Parks, featuring The Teton Range and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole National Monument, Wyoming, 1950.

Ansel adams national parks