SAY YOU WERE A LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER. In that scenario, you’d be hard pressed to think of a bettor mentor than Ansel Adams. Carlan Tapp sure thinks so. For three years in the seventies, he was Adams’ assistant for his Yosemite workshops. There, he learned how to see landscapes in a different way.
From Adams’ work with Yosemite, he also learned about the political power of photography. Today, Carlan, a descendant of the Wicocomico, runs Naamehnay Project-Question of Power, a non-profit that acts as a “visual voice” for Native American homelands threatened by energy industrialization.
What did you learn from Ansel Adams?
He was very sharing of information. Some photographers won’t give away trade secrets, but he was the opposite. A great teacher. He’s the reason I have taught workshops through my whole career. Mostly I learned about the power of the photograph. Here was a man who took pictures of the West, put a portfolio under his arm, and took it back to DC. The Senators would look at these pictures of Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite and say We didn’t realize this existed. He basically saved the Yosemite Valley.
Your landscapes include highways, cars, things photographers often avoid.
I’m really a documentary photographer. I’m not an art photographer trying to sell prints. My pictures are about what’s going on. These days, it’s harder and harder to shoot a sky without contrails or a landscape without power lines. So I say include them. The true definition of landscape, it really involves cultural and manmade elements. Forget this purist idea of the untouched land.
Tell me about your non-profit, Naamehnay Project-Question of Power.
I was in New York around 9/11 and it just hit me that I needed to do something more worthwhile. I looked around New Mexico and saw lots of health issues from coal plants on different pueblos. I went to Shiprock and started talking to people about this huge new coal plant they were planning to build. But the tribes were already sick or had asthma from older plants! That led to 20 years of work, telling the story about how Native homelands are impacted by energy industrialization. I was creating a visual voice – photos, film, and audio – for people who had no voice. We show it around the country, in galleries, to legislatures and in litigation.
Sounds like Ansel Adams.
Sounds like Ansel Adams.
Learn more at CarlanTapp.com
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Photo Courtesy Carlan Tapp
