My Youthful Years In Ansel Adams’ Orbit

I Wanted to Revolutionize Photography. Then I Got a Job With the Man Who Wrote the Rule Book.

I had the enormous good fortune to work for the photographer Ansel Adams in the early 1980s.

At the time I applied for the job, I was a graduate student in the master of fine arts program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Like my peers, I thought I’d make my way as a photographer by teaching.

But then one day I stumbled on an ad in Artweek for an editorial assistant opening at the Friends of Photography, a nonprofit organization that Ansel founded in 1967 to present exhibitions, publications, …