A century before Jimmy Chin, in the 2018 documentary Free Solo, shed fresh light on Yosemite’s storied Half Dome, Ansel Adams’s photographs of the towering granite rock formation—part of a vast collection spanning 50 years and countless landscapes—defined the American wilderness in the 1900s. Despite today’s many color shots of nature, these black-and-white images by Adams are still among the most moving, perhaps because they seem to stand still in time, as do the phenomena they depict. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, “Ansel Adams in Our Time” sets more than 100 of the photographer’s works alongside both the 19th-century government survey images that influenced him and the current work of contemporary artists such as Trevor Paglen and Catherine Opie, who count Adams among their inspirations. —J.V.