Barn Fence, Cape Cod

1937

A month in Arizona with Georgia O'Keeffe

In 1937 Adams, O'Keeffe and friends organize a month-long camping trip in Arizona, guided by Orville Cox, head wrangler at Ghost Ranch. Both artists create new work, and Adams makes a candid portrait of O'Keeffe with Cox on the rim of Canyon de Chelly, where, he later remarked, some of his best photographs were made.

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.

1940

“A Pageant of Photography”: the largest photography show in the West

In 1940 Adams creates “A Pageant of Photography,” the largest and most important photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors.

1941–1942

The Mural Project for the Department of the Interior

In 1941 Adams contracts with the National Park Service for 180 days to photograph the national parks, Indian reservations and other lands under the department's management, for mural-sized prints to decorate its new building; he sets off on a road trip with his friend Cedric and his son Michael, combining the work with commissions for the U.S. Potash Company and Standard Oil. The project ends on June 30, 1942, and because of the war the murals are never made: Adams sends the department 225 small prints but keeps the 229 negatives.