Zone Eleven

Zone Eleven is a reference to Ansel Adams' Zone System, a method to control exposure of the negative in order to obtain a full range of tonality in the photographic print from the deepest black of Zone 0 to the brightest highlight in Zone 10. Zone Eleven is a metaphor coined by artist Mike Mandel in his challenge to create a book of Adams' photographs outside of the bounds of his personal work. Many of these photographs were found in the archives of his commercial and editorial assignments, and from his experimentation with the new Polaroid material of the times. For this book, Mandel has unearthed images that are unexpected for Adams, and created a new context of facing page relationships, and sequence. Zone Eleven is the product of Mike Mandel's research of over 50,000 Adams images located within four different archives to present a body of Adams' work that was unknown until now.
Conceptually, Zone Eleven is a companion book to the famous book Evidence published by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan in 1977. As Evidence reframes the institutional documentary photograph with new context and meaning, Zone Eleven responds to the audience expectation of "the iconic Ansel Adams nature photograph." But Mandel selects images that do not fit that expectation. Zone Eleven is a book of Ansel Adams images that surprisingly speak to issues of the social relations, the built environment, and alienation.