Requote notes:

In the same interview series, Adams repeated the same idea: “But as I say, there’s nothing worse than a very sharp image of a very fuzzy concept.” (Interview VI, 26 May 1972, Tape 9, Side 1, p. 220)

Extended excerpt [Interview]:

Ruth Teiser: “In discussing photography with people whose photogaphs you don’t necessarily admire tremendously, do ideas come to you in an interchange of opinion?”

Ansel Adams: “Oh sure. Ideas come. Sometimes I have occasions to be very critical because of unnecessary sloppiness. The thing that bothers me more than anything else is weakness. I don’t mean what fascists would say was weak, but just no body, namby-pamby. You know, many musicians just play, and so what? Well, many of the photographers you see are just so what? The way the photographers see, the way they print, the way they present the prints, the way they handle them. When I see a kid come up with a portfolio and he has a nice print protected by a slipsheet, the changes are that the work is good. It may not be; it may be a great shock; you might find some awful, tasteless things. I always say, there’s nothing worse than a clear, sharp image of a fuzzy concept. [Laughter] You get a terrible concept it might be physically sharp, but it’s just empty or in bad taste.” (pp. 58-59)

Source link: Conversations with Ansel Adams: Oral History Transcript (14 May 1972) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/convanseladams00adamrich#page/58/mode/2up

Extended excerpt [Interview – Adams is referring to then-President Ronald Reagan and Interior Secretary James Watt]:

“Here is an important point: Only two and a half percent of the land in this country is protected. Not only are we being fought in trying to extend that two and a half percent to include other important or fragile areas but we are having to fight to protect that small two and a half percent. It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save our environment. Our worst enemy is the person the President [Reagan] designated with the responsibility of managing the country’s environment: James Watt. No wonder it is a monumental battle.”

Source link: “Ansel Adams” (March 1983) online via David Sheff.com: http://davidsheff.com/article/ansel-adams/

Extended excerpt [Article about the Sierra Club’s environmental advocacy & then-Executive Director David Brower. Adams, a long-time Sierra Club member, had become a critic of the direction he perceived Brower was leading the non-profit.]:

“Adams, a friendly hearty gnome with a stubborn chin nearly concealed by a gray bush of a beard and a strong forehead concealed by no hair whatsoever, lives in a house looking down the magnificent, monochromatic Big Sur, south of Carmel. The patriarch still says splendid things: “Wilderness is to the great megalopolis that the commons was to the little village of bygone days. But if the wilderness is overused, it can no longer be a democratic commons. Take Yosemite as example.”

Or, “The big enemy now is not the dam and highway builders. It’s the damn unconcerned people. People want to take all their comforts, everything, into the wilderness. All they want is a different view out their trailer window.”

Source link: “Brower Power Awaits the Verdict (14 April 1969) online via the Sports Illustrated Vault: http://www.si.com/vault/1969/04/14/612203/brower-power-awaits-the-verdict

Extended excerpt [Interview]:

David Sheff: “Despite the fact that you’ve taken a good number of portraits, there’s an impression that you photograph only nature. In fact, photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “The world is falling to pieces and Weston and Adams are doing pictures of rocks.”

Adams: “It’s too bad we have to be swamped with dogma. But I would never apologize for photographing rocks. Rocks can be very beautiful. But, yes, people have asked why I don’t put people into my pictures of the natural scene. I respond, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the view.” That usually doesn’t go over at all.”

Source link: “Ansel Adams” (March 1983) online via David Sheff.com: https://www.davidsheff.com/ansel-adams/

Extended excerpt [Portfolio preface]:

“To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things. Impression is not enough. Design, style, technique, – these, too, are not enough. Art must reach further than impression or self-revelation. Art, said Alfred Stieglitz, is the affirmation of life. And life, or its eternal evidence, is everywhere.” (Introduction, Portfolio One, no page number)

Source: Editor’s copy – The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (1977|1985 7th edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-8212-1122-6

Extended excerpt [Autobiography preface]:

“I am not going to retrace my life from past to present on a one-lane highway. I intend to recall varieties of experience, stretching tentacles of memory to the earliest sources in such sequences as seem logical, but without restrictions of time or place. When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” (p. ix)

Source: Editor’s copy – Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-8212-1596-5

Extended excerpt: “Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting, or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of the granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters. At first the colossal aspect may dominate; then we perceive and respond to the delicate and persuasive complex of nature.”

Source: Editor’s copy – The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (1977|1985 7th edition) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0-8212-1122-6