The Legacy Of The Sierra Club Adams - 1297 Words

As Adams pursued his work in both art and conservation the various lines of his life were beginning to converge revealing both the unity and the disjunction of his ideas. 137 His impact was felt on both spheres of influence. Using modern techniques of mass communications, Adams brought a vision of idealized wilderness to a broad audience and linked the environmental movement with nationalism and a romantic view of nature. The sustained popularity of his photographs illuminates a continuing public fascination with the wilderness landscape as both a place of beauty and a symbol of national identity and ideals. (Pacific 42) Most leaders within the conservation movement continued to share his ideal assuming that economic growth and wilderness†¦show more content†¦During these years the club sought to establish the Kings River region, to the south of Yosemite in th e board of the Sierra Club asked him to lobby in Washington on behalf of the park(pacific 31-32) with total naivetà ƒ © he wrote I ventured into the strange wilderness of out nations capitol with a portfolio of photographs under my arm visiting congressmen and senators in their lairs. I boldly proclaim the glories of the high sierra and showed my pictures with unabashed confidence that they would prove our contention132Two years later, in 1938, Adams sent a copy of his recently published book of photographs, The Sierra Nevada and the John Muir Trail, to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Impressed with the volume, Ickes showed it to President Roosevelt, who asked to keep it for the White House. Whether or not their actions can be directly credited to the influence of Adams s photographs, Roosevelt and Ickes both worked for the passage of the park bill which had stalled in Congress, and in 1940 the park was created.(pacific 31-32)in 1941 adams was appointed by sec of interior Harold ickes as a photographic