Ansel Adams, Yosemite, and the Price of Great Art
An Inscribed Adams Presentation Copy with Bill Turnage Letter and Yosemite Association Provenance
ADAMS, Ansel. Ansel Adams. Hastings-on-Hudson, New York: Morgan & Morgan, 1972. First edition, second printing, October 1972.
A compelling Yosemite association group centered on an inscribed Ansel Adams presentation copy and accompanied by a remarkable typed signed letter from Bill Turnage preserving a pointed but cordial disagreement about Yosemite, value, concessions, and the meaning of art itself.
The group connects three important figures within the modern history of Yosemite: Ansel Adams, the photographer most identified with the visual mythology and conservation identity of the Sierra Nevada; Don Hummel, president of Yosemite Park & Curry Co., the concession company responsible for much of the park’s visitor infrastructure; and Bill Turnage, Adams’s manager, intermediary, and later managing trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.
What survives here is not simply a signed Adams book, but a preserved Yosemite-world exchange involving photography, commerce, conservation, artistic value, and mutual respect despite disagreement.
The Yosemite Association
The association itself is unusually strong.
Ansel Adams needs little introduction: photographer, environmental advocate, Sierra Club figure, and perhaps the single most influential visual interpreter of Yosemite in American cultural history. His photographs helped define how generations imagined wilderness, the American West, and the moral seriousness of conservation itself.
Don Hummel occupied a very different but equally important Yosemite role. As president of Yosemite Park & Curry Co., he oversaw the practical and commercial infrastructure of the park: lodging, food service, concessions, visitor experience, circulation, and the realities of managing enormous public tourism within a protected landscape.
Bill Turnage functioned between these worlds. As Adams’s manager and representative, and later president of the Wilderness Society, he occupied both the artistic and conservation sides of the Yosemite conversation.
The present group therefore preserves an unusually layered intersection of Yosemite culture: art, business, environmental stewardship, tourism, and personal diplomacy.
The “Hamburgers” Letter
The extraordinary centerpiece of the group is Bill Turnage’s typed signed letter to Don Hummel dated 3 August 1973.
The letter responds to an earlier exchange apparently involving the value of Adams’s original photographs in comparison with concession pricing inside Yosemite. Turnage writes with humor, restraint, and unmistakable sharpness:
“How on earth does one respond to a letter comparing the price of hamburgers to that of great art?”
The sentence transforms the group from ordinary signed material into something far more revealing.
Turnage frames Adams not merely as a photographer, but as “the finest and most renowned creative photographer in the entire world,” while simultaneously preserving a relationship warm enough to continue exchanging gifts and personal regard.
The closing line is especially remarkable:
“I hope you will accept this gift as a token of our continuing affection...if not full agreement!”
That phrase captures the historical interest of the entire archive. The disagreement is real, but so is the mutual respect.
The Presentation Copy
The included volume is Adams’s major Morgan & Morgan monograph published in 1972 and inscribed by Adams to Don and Jeanne Hummel:
“For Don and Jeanne Hummel
With many fond regards
Yosemite 5-4-73
Ansel Adams”
The personal nature of the inscription matters. The book was not merely sent institutionally to Yosemite Park & Curry Co., but specifically to the Hummels themselves.
Turnage’s letter further explains that he personally asked Adams to inscribe the volume for them, making the presentation a consciously mediated gesture within the context of ongoing disagreement.
The Signed Adams Reproduction
Also included is a signed Adams photolithographic card/reproduction of Fern Spring, Dusk, Yosemite Valley, California.
The reverse identifies the image as a photolithographic reproduction after Adams’s photograph, produced using Polaroid Type 55 P/N 4x5 Land film and printed by George Waters in San Francisco. While not an original gelatin silver print, the signed reproduction remains an attractive Yosemite-associated Adams item in its own right and strengthens the coherence of the group materially and visually.
Included in the Group
Included are:
Ansel Adams, Ansel Adams. Morgan & Morgan, 1972. First edition, second printing, hardcover in dust jacket.
Adams inscription to Don and Jeanne Hummel dated 5-4-73.
Signed Adams photolithographic reproduction card of Fern Spring, Dusk, Yosemite Valley, California.
Typed signed Bill Turnage letter to Don Hummel dated 3 August 1973.
Original related mailing envelope addressed to Don Hummel.
Condition
Book very good or better overall.
Dust jacket present in protective cover with toning, creasing, edgewear, and several tears or closed tears, especially to the rear panel. Interior generally clean. Adams inscription strong and legible.
The signed reproduction card and Turnage letter show expected folds, handling wear, and light age toning consistent with correspondence material. Envelope preserved.
An unusually vivid Yosemite association archive connecting Ansel Adams, Yosemite concession culture, wilderness politics, artistic value, and one of the most revealing surviving letters of Adams-related social exchange.
