Ansel Adams Master Photographers
, BBC series (1983)
Q: You're very concerned with mood, obviously...
Ansel Adams: Well, that's part of the visualization, the aesthetics. Aesthetic in emotional statement. I think it might be helpful to you to quote that Stieglitz statement, when someone asked him:
"Stieglitz, we don't understand this talk about creative photography and creativity, with a mechanical medium. How do you make a creative photograph?" ― And he replied that he was interested to "go out in the world with his camera, he'd become across something that excited him emotionally, spiritually and aesthetically" ― forget all those words, they don't mean much, they're just symbols of something much deeper - "and I see the picture in my mind's eye. I make the photograph and I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt." ― And that word equivalent is really profound because it is the equivalent of two things: what he saw and what he felt about it.