SANTA ANA, CA.- Bowers Museum presents Adams, Curtis and Weston: Photographers of the American West May 16 through November 29, 2015. The exhibition documents the changing landscape of the west and the art of photography through time as well as through the lenses of three of the most celebrated 20th century American photographers: Ansel Adams, Edward S. Curtis and Edward Weston. The photos range in date from 1905 to 1967 and depict a variety of subjects, including landscapes and portraits. Forty-two photographs from the Capital Group Foundation Collection is on display in the museum’s newly renovated gallery in the historic Mary Muth Wing.

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. He is seen as an environmental folk hero and a symbol of the American West, especially of Yosemite National Park. Adams’ dedication to wilderness preservation and his signature black-and-white photographs inspire an appreciation for natural beauty and a strong conservation ethic.

Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) was an American ethnologist and photographer of the American West and of Native American peoples. Most of Curtis’ most well-known photographs are taken from his monumental work, The North American Indian (1907–1930), a twenty-volume photographic record and ethnography of many tribes of the western continent.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Edward Weston (1886–1958) photographed an expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a “quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography” because of his focus on the people and places of the American West.