In the debate raging between Pictorialism and Purism in
American photographic circles of the 1930s, William Mortensen and Ansel Adams were the two main
combatants. Adams’s distaste for Mortensen’s work ran deep: he referred to the
photographer as “the anti-Christ,” railed against his fanciful style of
photography in the press, and excluded him from important exhibitions. Adams wanted
photography to be accepted as an art form based on its own merits and unique
characteristics, especially the camera’s capacity to objectively represent
nature in all of its tones and textures. He was adamantly opposed to combining
photography with other arts, and he considered the manipulation of negatives
and prints beyond the strict limitations of the medium. Previsualization—Adams’s
influential idea of composing the picture entirely before making the exposure—gained
traction with generations of professional and amateur photographers.