Barn, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

1936

Solo show at Stieglitz's gallery in New York

Gathering his recent work, Adams holds a solo show in 1936 at Stieglitz's New York gallery “An American Place.” The exhibition proves successful with both critics and the buying public, and the revered Stieglitz himself praises Adams warmly.

1938

“Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail”

In 1938 Adams creates the limited-edition book “Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail,” part of the Sierra Club's effort to secure national-park status for Kings Canyon. The book and his testimony before Congress play a vital role in the success of that campaign.

1939–1942

The Zone System, with Fred Archer

While teaching at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, Adams and the portrait photographer Fred Archer develop the Zone System — a calibrated scale of brightness, based on sensitometry, from Zone 0 (black) to Zone X (white) that lets the photographer determine in advance how the film must be exposed, developed and printed. The date is given variously as around 1939–1940 or as 1942.

1940

Helps establish MoMA's photography department

In 1940, together with the trustee David H. McAlpin and the curator Beaumont Newhall, Adams helps establish a photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York — the first at a major American art museum — acting as McAlpin's and Newhall's chief advisor. On December 31, 1940 the department opens with the exhibition “Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics,” which took aesthetic quality as its guiding principle.

1945–1946

The first fine-art photography department in the US

Adams is asked to form the first fine-art photography department in the United States at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) — in 1945 or 1946. He invites Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston as guest lecturers and Minor White as principal instructor.

1952

Co-founding the magazine “Aperture”

In 1952 Adams is one of the founders of the magazine “Aperture,” conceived as a serious journal of photography displaying its best practitioners and newest innovations. He also contributes to Arizona Highways, where his article on Mission San Xavier del Bac, with text by his longtime friend Nancy Newhall, grows into a book published in 1954 — the first of their many collaborations.