Philip Hyde in Baja California, Mexico, 1995 by Tom Bean, Still joyfully carrying 4X5 Baby Deardorf View Camera at age 73

“Philip Hyde has a rare feeling for the medium of photography. I consider him one of the very best photographers of the natural scene in America.” –Ansel Adams, 1971

Born in San Francisco in 1921, Philip Hyde was a pioneer of the West Coast tradition. He made his first back country fine art landscape photograph in 1942 and gradually lost his eyesight 1999-2000. His photographs helped protect such national treasures as the Grand Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Denali, Tongass National Forest, Canyonlands, the Coast Redwoods, Point Reyes, King’s Canyon, the North Cascades, Oregon Cascades, High Sierra Wilderness, Big Sur, the Wind River Range, Islands off Puerto Rico and many others. Philip Hyde trained under Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model and other definers of the medium at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. Because of the historical significance of his work, a common misconception is that Philip Hyde was a photographer of a bygone era. In reality, he photographed for 58 years until he was 79 years old, into the new millennium. His work was always ahead of its time and went far beyond the classical landscapes for which he is known. His unique photographic vision and novel compositions are widely emulated today. He is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential of all outdoor photographers. A large body of his work from the 1990′s from Europe, Canada, Mexico, Hawaii and the Midwestern U. S. has never been seen by the general public. Two of his most noted images displayed at www.philiphyde.com are his 1964 color conservation icon, “Cathedral In The Desert, Glen Canyon,” that American Photo Magazine named one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th Century and “The Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza,” a vintage black and white photograph, made in what is now the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Ansel Adams said that he liked this 1950 photograph of the Minarets better than his own. To learn more about Philip Hyde go to PHILIP HYDE SHORT BIO or go to Philip Hyde’s Sierra Club History Page.