"Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships"
About this Quote
A photographer best known for reverent landscapes opens with what sounds like heresy: fixing God. The line lands because it yokes darkroom craft to theology, then undercuts the piety with a wink. Adams isn’t actually claiming divinity blundered; he’s puncturing the myth that photography is mere nature-copying. If the camera were a neutral witness, there’d be no need for “dodging and burning.” His joke makes a serious point: tonal relationships aren’t handed down intact by the world or by the negative. They’re built.
In the Zone System era, Adams treated exposure and development like a disciplined language, but the print was where meaning got negotiated. Dodging and burning are not cosmetic “fixes” so much as editorial decisions about what the viewer is supposed to feel: where the eye should rest, which clouds should brood, how a mountain should carry weight. By calling these choices “mistakes God made,” he flips the usual hierarchy. Nature isn’t the final authority; interpretation is.
The subtext is also a defense against purist gatekeeping. Darkroom manipulation gets framed as cheating whenever people want photography to be more documentary than art. Adams replies with controlled provocation: if you believe the photograph is truth, you’re worshipping the wrong object. The print is a constructed argument, not a receipt.
Context matters: this is mid-century craft talk from a man who watched photography fight for legitimacy in museums. The quip is his manifesto in disguise: the job isn’t to reproduce the world’s tones, it’s to complete them.
In the Zone System era, Adams treated exposure and development like a disciplined language, but the print was where meaning got negotiated. Dodging and burning are not cosmetic “fixes” so much as editorial decisions about what the viewer is supposed to feel: where the eye should rest, which clouds should brood, how a mountain should carry weight. By calling these choices “mistakes God made,” he flips the usual hierarchy. Nature isn’t the final authority; interpretation is.
The subtext is also a defense against purist gatekeeping. Darkroom manipulation gets framed as cheating whenever people want photography to be more documentary than art. Adams replies with controlled provocation: if you believe the photograph is truth, you’re worshipping the wrong object. The print is a constructed argument, not a receipt.
Context matters: this is mid-century craft talk from a man who watched photography fight for legitimacy in museums. The quip is his manifesto in disguise: the job isn’t to reproduce the world’s tones, it’s to complete them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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