SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - Photographer Pirkle Jones, a colleague of Ansel Adams known for his pictures of California's landscapes and people, including a famous Black Panthers series, died March 15. He was 95.

Jones died of heart failure, said his business associate Jennifer McFarland.

Jones worked on the Panther photographs with his wife, poet and photographer Ruth-Marion Baruch, who died in 1997. A furor broke out when the photos were scheduled to be exhibited at San Francisco's De Young Museum in 1968, almost causing officials to cancel. But after local artists and others rallied in support of the exhibit, the museum went ahead with it. The show drew 100,000 visitors.

In 1956, Jones collaborated with Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange on a photographic essay "Death of a Valley," documenting the last year of the Berryessa Valley, which was flooded for the Monticello Dam.

"Pirkle Jones' photographs are just like John Steinbeck's writing; they both capture the struggles of California's coming of age and its emblem of freedom," noted photographer Bruce Weber said.