The Bancroft Library is pleased to present the online companion exhibit to Fiat Lux Redux: Ansel Adams and Clark Kerr, which opened in The Bancroft Gallery on September 27, 2012. The online exhibit features photographs of the University of California System in the 1960s by legendary photographer Ansel Adams. These photographs — commissioned by former UC President Clark Kerr, and published in the 1967 book Fiat Lux which celebrated the educational system’s centennial — offer a rarely seen look at the evolution of the renowned University of California system through the eye of a master photographer best known for his iconic California landscapes. Fiat Lux was intended not as a document of the University as it was, but rather a portrait of the University as it would be. The Fiat Lux project was a massive endeavor, producing 605 fine prints and over 6,700 negatives, far more than the 1,000 images stipulated in Adams’s contract. After Adams’s lifetime devotion to Yosemite, Fiat Lux was probably the biggest single project of his life. The online exhibit also showcases related archival materials about the controversial Kerr himself, and the evolution of his ideas and ideals.
Visit the companion online exhibit:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/fiat-lux/[slideshow]
©1967, the Regents of the University of California, by permission of The Bancroft Library.
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