February 20th Should Be a National Holiday

Sidney Poitier is 88 today.

A good day to watch Lilies of the Field, Poitier’s wonderful, enjoyable Academy Award-winning performance.

Sidney Poitier and  Lilia Skalia, Lilies of the Field, 1962.
Sidney Poitier and Lilia Skalia, Lilies of the Field, 1962.

Ansel Adams was born on this date in 1902.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.

His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.

The New York Times Obituary

The Ansel Adams Gallery