Cedric Wright
Encyclopedia
George Cedric Wright was an American violin
ist and wilderness
photographer of the High Sierra. He was Ansel Adams'
s mentor and best friend for decades.
. His father was a successful attorney, and one of his clients was astronomer Charles Hitchcock Adams
, Ansel Adams's father. Cedric's uncle, William Hammond Wright
, was an astronomer who became head of Lick Observatory
. As a result of his father's success, Wright was financially comfortable throughout his life.
His first wife was Mildred Sahlström, and they had a daughter, Alberta. After they divorced, he married pianist and piano teacher Rhea Ufford in 1929. They had a daughter, Joanne, and a son, David.
. After study in the United States, he spent seven years studying with Otakar Ševčík
in Prague
and Vienna
.
Wright was known as a "distinguished violinist", and was a violin teacher at the University of California Extension and Mills College
for many years. Renowned violin teacher and conductor Louis Persinger
called him "one of the foremost performers and instructors in the West".
In 1934, arthritis
brought an early end to his professional career as a violinist, and he then decided to pursue his hobby of photography as a career.
when Cedric was about 21 and Ansel was about 8 years old. They encountered each other again on a four-week wilderness High Trip
in Yosemite National Park
, organized by the Sierra Club
in 1923. Nancy Newhall
wrote, "On that first High Trip, Ansel found himself drawn to one Cedric Wright, a violinist, who could fiddle by the fire deep into the night and still be among the first up, making a little fire of twigs . . ."
Their friendship, which continued until Wright's death in 1959, was described by Mary Street Alinder as an "intense comradeship". The men shared a deep interest in both classical music and photography, since Adams was an accomplished classical pianist. Wright introduced Adams to the writings of the British philosopher Edward Carpenter
, whose thoughts helped shape both men's world views. Together, they discussed other writers, including Elbert Hubbard
and Walt Whitman
.
Back in the Bay Area after their initial 1923 wilderness journey together had ended, Adams became a part of Wright's social circle of musicians and Sierra Club activists who gathered at his Berkeley
home. Adams "idolized" Wright, and he followed in Wright's footsteps by taking long trips into the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada each summer, photographing the remote mountain peaks.
In his autobiography, Ansel Adams called Cedric Wright "my best friend for many years". He described Wright as "almost an occupant of another world and a creator and messenger of beauty and mysteries. Perhaps his greatest gift was that of imparting confidence to those who were wavering on the edge of fear and indecision; often it was me."
In 1926, Wright introduced Adams to Albert Bender, a patron of the arts who was to play an instrumental role in Adams's enormous success as a photographer.
Wright was also a close friend of Virginia Best, who was Adams' girlfriend for years. Wright visited with her when Adams was away on photography trips, and she confided in him about the problems in her relationship with Adams. Wright was their best man when they were married on January 2, 1928.
Wright accompanied Adams when he took three of the most famous photographs of his career:
On April 10, 1927, Wright hiked with Adams, Virginia Best, Charles Michael and another photographer, Arnold Williams, to a rocky perch high above Yosemite Valley called the "Diving Board". There, Adams took Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, which Mary Street Alinder called Adams's "most significant photograph" because it was a triumph of visualization showing "extreme manipulation of tonal values". This photo set Adams on the path of becoming America's most well-known photographer. Adams called the excursion a "personally historic moment in my photographic career."
During the 1932 Sierra Club High Trip to Sequoia National Park
, Wright and Adams both photographed Precipice Lake near Eagle Scout Peak, while Virgina swam in the lake, still arrayed with icy patches. Wright was shocked when he saw Adams's Frozen Lake and Cliffs, The Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, so much more beautiful than than the photos Wright himself had produced. Mary Street Alinder described the image: "Mirrored ghostly upon the inky waters, a shattered black cliff descends into a partially frozen lake."
In 1941, Secretary of the Interior
Harold Ickes
hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Wright accompanied Adams and his young son Michael on a long road trip around the west. While traveling through the Chama River valley near nightfall on November 1, 1941, they encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico
, and pulled to the side of the road. Adams recalled that he yelled at his son Michael and at Wright to "Get this! Get that, for God's sake! We don't have much time!" Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, they scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. The result was Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
, a photograph that became so popular and collectible that Adams personally made over 1,300 photographic prints of it during his long career. On October 17, 2006, Sotheby’s auctioned a print of this photograph for $609,600. Art historian H. W. Janson
called this photo "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography".
, and hired architect Bernard Maybeck
to remodel it into a home. Nicknamed "the barn", Wright's home featured "a soaring ceiling with room for a rope swing hung from the rafters and space enough for two grand pianos. Jacomena Maybeck remembered evenings at Cedric Wright's studio, when the women wore evening dresses and the men wore tuxedos, and there was much music around the big stone fireplace."
The home was known as "party central" among Sierra Club members of the era. Among that social circle were Richard M. Leonard
and his wife Doris, Francis P. Farquhar
and his wife Marjorie, David Brower and his wife Anne, Edgar Wayburn
and his wife Peggy, and Wright's best friends, Ansel Adams and his wife Virginia.
Nancy Newhall described the atmosphere: "Meanwhile in Cedric Wright's house among the redwoods in Berkeley, Ansel was finding a warm welcome ... In his house there was music for violin and piano; there was poetry, especially Whitman."
were large wilderness excursions organized and led by the Sierra Club
, beginning in 1901. While most of these excursions were to the High Sierra, some were to other destinations, such as the Canadian Rockies
in 1928. Wright's photos of that trip, along with those of Adams and other photographers, were included in a portfolio produced to commemorate it. No other member participated in as many High Trips as Wright, and David Brower recounted that Wright told him in 1953 that he had participated in 33 High Trips. Tom Turner wrote that "Wright was a tireless and talented photographer of the mountain scene, who entertained campers with his fiddle and loved to greet weary hikers at day's end with an unexpected cup of tea or soup."
During the High Trips, Wright and his student Dorothy Minty would often entertain groups of 200 participants with performances of Bach's Double Violin Concerto.
patent for a portable photo-printing device in 1935.
He also made various devices, including "collapsible and portable latrines" for the High Trips, and "astonishingly solid camera and violin cases of varnished plywood with leather thongs, which would tolerate the rigors of being packed for a month on muleback."
Several of his photos were displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition
in San Francisco in 1939 and 1940.
Wright's work was also featured in a 1943 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art called "Action Photography", along with work by Erich Salomon
, Peter Stackpole
, Alfred Stieglitz
, Paul Strand
and Weegee
.
In an article published in 1957, which included eight full-page photographs, Wright described his thoughts about how high mountain beauty resembles great music: "Beauty haunts the high country like a majestic hymn, sings in cold sunny air, the brilliant mountain air—makes of sunlight a living thing—floats in cloud forms—filters changing floods of light ever clothing the mountains anew. Beauty arrives in deep voice of river and wind through forest, swelling the chorus, giving sonority universal proportions."
He dedicated these words to Sierra Club leader William Edward Colby
, and they became part of the introduction to Wright's posthumous book, Words of the Earth.
Ansel Adams described Wright's final years as "complex and difficult". He suffered a stroke, which caused a personality change, and he became "rigid and dictatorial", which was a "painful experience for all his friends."
edited and completed his book, Words of the Earth, which was among the first titles published by Sierra Club Books
in 1960. Ansel Adams wrote the foreword.
In 1961, a 12,362-foot (3768 meter) High Sierra peak was officially named Mount Cedric Wright (36°54′13.9"N 118°23′15.2"W), in memory of Wright, who was described as an "internationally known photographer whose photography has made a significant contribution to the appreciation of the natural scene." The mountain is located in Kings Canyon National Park, 1.9 km (1.2 mi) southwest of Colosseum Mountain and 5.3 km (3.3 mi) south-southeast of Mount Pinchot. Virginia Best Adams later arranged for park ranger Randy Morgenson to scatter Wrights ashes on the slopes of Mount Cedric Wright.
In 1976, Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club arranged for Wright's personal papers to be donated to the Bancroft Library
at the University of California, Berkeley
.
A 2011 exhibit at the Chadwick School
featured photos of the school by both Wright and Adams. Two of Wright's children had attended the school. A critic writing for the Los Angeles Times
praised Wright's work: "In the Chadwick exhibition, it's Wright who trumps Adams with the show's most jaw-dropping image: a 1947 shot of five boys playing basketball on the school's outdoor court, against a backdrop of rolling hills and the Los Angeles Basin far below. It captures a moment of sheer ballet, the composition so gracefully perfect that one would think it had been choreographed by Balanchine — except that you can't choreograph players leaping for a rebound."
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist and wilderness
Wilderness
Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
photographer of the High Sierra. He was Ansel Adams'
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
s mentor and best friend for decades.
Family
Cedric Wright was born and raised in Alameda, CaliforniaAlameda, California
Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. The Bay Farm Island portion of the city is adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. At the 2010 census, the city had a...
. His father was a successful attorney, and one of his clients was astronomer Charles Hitchcock Adams
Charles Hitchcock Adams
Charles Hitchcock Adams was an amateur American astronomer, and father of photographer Ansel Adams....
, Ansel Adams's father. Cedric's uncle, William Hammond Wright
William Hammond Wright
William Hammond Wright was an American astronomer. He was director of the Lick Observatory from 1935 until 1942....
, was an astronomer who became head of Lick Observatory
Lick Observatory
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA...
. As a result of his father's success, Wright was financially comfortable throughout his life.
His first wife was Mildred Sahlström, and they had a daughter, Alberta. After they divorced, he married pianist and piano teacher Rhea Ufford in 1929. They had a daughter, Joanne, and a son, David.
Violinist
Wright was motivated to become a violinist when he heard a performance by Fritz KreislerFritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
. After study in the United States, he spent seven years studying with Otakar Ševčík
Otakar Ševcík
Otakar Ševčík was a Czech violinist and influential teacher. He was known as a soloist and an ensemble player, including his occasional performances with Eugène Ysaÿe.-Biography:...
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
Wright was known as a "distinguished violinist", and was a violin teacher at the University of California Extension and Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
for many years. Renowned violin teacher and conductor Louis Persinger
Louis Persinger
Louis Persinger was an American violinist and pianist.Louis Persinger trained at the Leipzig Conservatory, before finishing with Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels. He became leader of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra and the Royal Opera Orchestra in Brussels. In 1915 he was appointed leader and assistant...
called him "one of the foremost performers and instructors in the West".
In 1934, arthritis
Arthritis
Arthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
brought an early end to his professional career as a violinist, and he then decided to pursue his hobby of photography as a career.
Friendship and collaboration with Ansel Adams
Cedric Wright first met Ansel Adams at a family gathering at the Wright family vacation home in the Santa Cruz MountainsSanta Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central California, United States. They form a ridge along the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco, separating the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley, and continuing south,...
when Cedric was about 21 and Ansel was about 8 years old. They encountered each other again on a four-week wilderness High Trip
High Trips
The High Trips were large wilderness excursions organized and led by the Sierra Club beginning in 1901. Club secretary William Colby initiated the High Trips, which usually traveled to the High Sierra, and led them from 1901 to 1929. Colby wrote, "It was from John Muir, President of the Club,...
in Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
, organized by the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
in 1923. Nancy Newhall
Nancy Newhall
Nancy Wynne Newhall was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture.Newhall was born Nancy Wynne in Lynn, Massachusetts,...
wrote, "On that first High Trip, Ansel found himself drawn to one Cedric Wright, a violinist, who could fiddle by the fire deep into the night and still be among the first up, making a little fire of twigs . . ."
Their friendship, which continued until Wright's death in 1959, was described by Mary Street Alinder as an "intense comradeship". The men shared a deep interest in both classical music and photography, since Adams was an accomplished classical pianist. Wright introduced Adams to the writings of the British philosopher Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter was an English socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, and early gay activist....
, whose thoughts helped shape both men's world views. Together, they discussed other writers, including Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he met early success as a traveling salesman with the Larkin soap company. Today Hubbard is mostly known as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an...
and Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
.
Back in the Bay Area after their initial 1923 wilderness journey together had ended, Adams became a part of Wright's social circle of musicians and Sierra Club activists who gathered at his Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
home. Adams "idolized" Wright, and he followed in Wright's footsteps by taking long trips into the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada each summer, photographing the remote mountain peaks.
In his autobiography, Ansel Adams called Cedric Wright "my best friend for many years". He described Wright as "almost an occupant of another world and a creator and messenger of beauty and mysteries. Perhaps his greatest gift was that of imparting confidence to those who were wavering on the edge of fear and indecision; often it was me."
In 1926, Wright introduced Adams to Albert Bender, a patron of the arts who was to play an instrumental role in Adams's enormous success as a photographer.
Wright was also a close friend of Virginia Best, who was Adams' girlfriend for years. Wright visited with her when Adams was away on photography trips, and she confided in him about the problems in her relationship with Adams. Wright was their best man when they were married on January 2, 1928.
Wright accompanied Adams when he took three of the most famous photographs of his career:
On April 10, 1927, Wright hiked with Adams, Virginia Best, Charles Michael and another photographer, Arnold Williams, to a rocky perch high above Yosemite Valley called the "Diving Board". There, Adams took Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, which Mary Street Alinder called Adams's "most significant photograph" because it was a triumph of visualization showing "extreme manipulation of tonal values". This photo set Adams on the path of becoming America's most well-known photographer. Adams called the excursion a "personally historic moment in my photographic career."
During the 1932 Sierra Club High Trip to Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California, in the United States. It was established on September 25, 1890. The park spans . Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly , the park contains among its natural resources the highest point in the...
, Wright and Adams both photographed Precipice Lake near Eagle Scout Peak, while Virgina swam in the lake, still arrayed with icy patches. Wright was shocked when he saw Adams's Frozen Lake and Cliffs, The Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, so much more beautiful than than the photos Wright himself had produced. Mary Street Alinder described the image: "Mirrored ghostly upon the inky waters, a shattered black cliff descends into a partially frozen lake."
In 1941, Secretary of the Interior
United States Secretary of the Interior
The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior.The US Department of the Interior should not be confused with the concept of Ministries of the Interior as used in other countries...
Harold Ickes
Harold L. Ickes
Harold LeClair Ickes was a United States administrator and politician. He served as United States Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, from 1933 to 1946, the longest tenure of anyone to hold the office, and the second longest serving Cabinet member in U.S. history next to James Wilson. Ickes...
hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Wright accompanied Adams and his young son Michael on a long road trip around the west. While traveling through the Chama River valley near nightfall on November 1, 1941, they encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico
Hernandez, New Mexico
Hernandez is an unincorporated community in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States. Hernandez is about northwest of Espanola on U.S. Routes 84/285....
, and pulled to the side of the road. Adams recalled that he yelled at his son Michael and at Wright to "Get this! Get that, for God's sake! We don't have much time!" Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, they scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. The result was Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is a photograph by Ansel Adams, taken late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of U.S. Route 84....
, a photograph that became so popular and collectible that Adams personally made over 1,300 photographic prints of it during his long career. On October 17, 2006, Sotheby’s auctioned a print of this photograph for $609,600. Art historian H. W. Janson
H. W. Janson
Horst Waldemar Janson , who published as H. W. Janson, was an American scholar of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has sold more than two million copies in fifteen languages.Janson was born in St. Petersburg in 1913 to Friedrich Janson and Helene...
called this photo "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography".
Home
In 1921, Wright purchased an old dairy barn at 2515 Etna Street in Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, and hired architect Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was a architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley...
to remodel it into a home. Nicknamed "the barn", Wright's home featured "a soaring ceiling with room for a rope swing hung from the rafters and space enough for two grand pianos. Jacomena Maybeck remembered evenings at Cedric Wright's studio, when the women wore evening dresses and the men wore tuxedos, and there was much music around the big stone fireplace."
The home was known as "party central" among Sierra Club members of the era. Among that social circle were Richard M. Leonard
Richard M. Leonard
Richard Manning Leonard was an American rock climber, environmentalist and attorney. He served as president of the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League, and was active in the Wilderness Society and the American Alpine Club...
and his wife Doris, Francis P. Farquhar
Francis P. Farquhar
Francis Peloubet Farquhar graduated from Harvard and came to San Francisco to set up in practice as a Certified Public Accountant...
and his wife Marjorie, David Brower and his wife Anne, Edgar Wayburn
Edgar Wayburn
Edgar Wayburn was an environmentalist who was elected president of the Sierra Club five times in the 1960s. One of America's legendary wilderness champions, Dr...
and his wife Peggy, and Wright's best friends, Ansel Adams and his wife Virginia.
Nancy Newhall described the atmosphere: "Meanwhile in Cedric Wright's house among the redwoods in Berkeley, Ansel was finding a warm welcome ... In his house there was music for violin and piano; there was poetry, especially Whitman."
Sierra Club High Trips
The High TripsHigh Trips
The High Trips were large wilderness excursions organized and led by the Sierra Club beginning in 1901. Club secretary William Colby initiated the High Trips, which usually traveled to the High Sierra, and led them from 1901 to 1929. Colby wrote, "It was from John Muir, President of the Club,...
were large wilderness excursions organized and led by the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
, beginning in 1901. While most of these excursions were to the High Sierra, some were to other destinations, such as the Canadian Rockies
Canadian Rockies
The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains range. They are the eastern part of the Canadian Cordillera, extending from the Interior Plains of Alberta to the Rocky Mountain Trench of British Columbia. The southern end borders Idaho and Montana of the USA...
in 1928. Wright's photos of that trip, along with those of Adams and other photographers, were included in a portfolio produced to commemorate it. No other member participated in as many High Trips as Wright, and David Brower recounted that Wright told him in 1953 that he had participated in 33 High Trips. Tom Turner wrote that "Wright was a tireless and talented photographer of the mountain scene, who entertained campers with his fiddle and loved to greet weary hikers at day's end with an unexpected cup of tea or soup."
During the High Trips, Wright and his student Dorothy Minty would often entertain groups of 200 participants with performances of Bach's Double Violin Concerto.
Photographer and writer
Arthritis forced Wright to give up his career as a violinist in 1934, and he resolved to pursue his hobby of photography as a new career. He was issued a United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
patent for a portable photo-printing device in 1935.
He also made various devices, including "collapsible and portable latrines" for the High Trips, and "astonishingly solid camera and violin cases of varnished plywood with leather thongs, which would tolerate the rigors of being packed for a month on muleback."
Several of his photos were displayed at the Golden Gate International Exposition
Golden Gate International Exposition
The Golden Gate International Exposition , held at San Francisco, California's Treasure Island, was a World's Fair that celebrated, among other things, the city's two newly-built bridges. The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge was dedicated in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge was dedicated in 1937...
in San Francisco in 1939 and 1940.
Wright's work was also featured in a 1943 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art called "Action Photography", along with work by Erich Salomon
Erich Salomon
Erich Salomon was a German-born news photographer known for his pictures in the diplomatic and legal professions and the innovative methods he used to acquire them....
, Peter Stackpole
Peter Stackpole
Peter Stackpole was an American photographer. Along with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, and Thomas McAvoy, he was one of Life Magazine's first staff photographers. He won a George Polk Award in 1954 and taught photography at the Academy of Art University. He also wrote a column in U.S....
, Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
, Paul Strand
Paul Strand
Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century...
and Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
.
In an article published in 1957, which included eight full-page photographs, Wright described his thoughts about how high mountain beauty resembles great music: "Beauty haunts the high country like a majestic hymn, sings in cold sunny air, the brilliant mountain air—makes of sunlight a living thing—floats in cloud forms—filters changing floods of light ever clothing the mountains anew. Beauty arrives in deep voice of river and wind through forest, swelling the chorus, giving sonority universal proportions."
He dedicated these words to Sierra Club leader William Edward Colby
William Edward Colby
right|225pxWilliam Edward Colby was an American lawyer, conservationist, and first Secretary of the Sierra Club.-Early life and education:...
, and they became part of the introduction to Wright's posthumous book, Words of the Earth.
Ansel Adams described Wright's final years as "complex and difficult". He suffered a stroke, which caused a personality change, and he became "rigid and dictatorial", which was a "painful experience for all his friends."
Legacy
After his death in 1959, Nancy NewhallNancy Newhall
Nancy Wynne Newhall was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, conservation, and American culture.Newhall was born Nancy Wynne in Lynn, Massachusetts,...
edited and completed his book, Words of the Earth, which was among the first titles published by Sierra Club Books
Sierra Club Books
Sierra Club Books is the publishing division of the Sierra Club, founded in 1960 by then Sierra Club President David Brower. Volumes intended for club members had been published prior to 1960. In addition, books under their name had been published before 1960, but done through already established...
in 1960. Ansel Adams wrote the foreword.
In 1961, a 12,362-foot (3768 meter) High Sierra peak was officially named Mount Cedric Wright (36°54′13.9"N 118°23′15.2"W), in memory of Wright, who was described as an "internationally known photographer whose photography has made a significant contribution to the appreciation of the natural scene." The mountain is located in Kings Canyon National Park, 1.9 km (1.2 mi) southwest of Colosseum Mountain and 5.3 km (3.3 mi) south-southeast of Mount Pinchot. Virginia Best Adams later arranged for park ranger Randy Morgenson to scatter Wrights ashes on the slopes of Mount Cedric Wright.
In 1976, Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club arranged for Wright's personal papers to be donated to the Bancroft Library
Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
A 2011 exhibit at the Chadwick School
Chadwick School
Chadwick School is a nonsectarian independent K-12 day school located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, California.-History:...
featured photos of the school by both Wright and Adams. Two of Wright's children had attended the school. A critic writing for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
praised Wright's work: "In the Chadwick exhibition, it's Wright who trumps Adams with the show's most jaw-dropping image: a 1947 shot of five boys playing basketball on the school's outdoor court, against a backdrop of rolling hills and the Los Angeles Basin far below. It captures a moment of sheer ballet, the composition so gracefully perfect that one would think it had been choreographed by Balanchine — except that you can't choreograph players leaping for a rebound."
External links
- Cedric Wright playing violin at a Sierra Club outing, Alger Lake, Sierra Nevada, California, 1931, photo by Ansel Adams
- Sierra Club 1928 High Trip Photo Album – photos of the Canadian Rockies (mostly by Ansel Adams and some by Cedric Wright)
- 1957 Portrait of Cedric Wright by g. Paul Bishop
- History: Ansel Adams, featuring three portraits of Ansel Adams by Cedric Wright
- http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://anseladamsamerica.com/work/images/cedricwrightphoto.jpg&imgrefurl=http://anseladamsamerica.com/work/index.php&usg=__X2t_YAwy-0j_Ux6oEw8Mt_R2NeI=&h=320&w=600&sz=69&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=5vgOonzYh5ISEM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=173&ei=uqBUTd62A4P6sAOm1ozpBQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcedric%2Bwright%2Bphotography%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D635%26tbs%3Disch:1%26prmd%3Divnso&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=213&vpy=194&dur=2533&hovh=164&hovw=308&tx=194&ty=105&oei=DqBUTYfvBZOasAOJw52zBQ&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0Ansel Adams on Top of Station Wagon, 1946, by Cedric Wright]
