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Robert Adams
In his series The New West (1973–74), photographer Robert Adams employs around his home of the Colorado Front Range a medium format 6x7-cm. camera, confronting the impact of human development on a land he had loved since adolescence. "What I tried to do," Adams later explained, "was to include the objects we'd brought to the landscape and which by common consent are the most ugly, but also to suggest that light can transform even the most grotesque, inhuman things into mysteries worthy of attention." Adams resisted the heavy import of Ansel Adams's influence, who had described photographically the landscape as a place monumental, a pristine natural order untouched by man. Documenting the radical transformations of the landscape, as he found them, wrought by construction and contemporary use, Robert Adams found beauty.
1. MOBILE HOMES, JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO, 1973 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. George Eastman House collections. © Robert Adams, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
2. TRACT HOUSING, NORTH GLENN AND THORNTON, COLORADO, 1973 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. George Eastman House collections. © Robert Adams, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
3. TRACT HOUSE, WESTMINSTER, COLORADO, 1974 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. Gift of the photographer. George Eastman House collections. © Robert Adams, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Audio excerpt from a 2005 interview, generously provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
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Hear Robert Adams speak about the early influence of Ansel Adams and the limits of photographic objectivity.
ROBERT ADAMS
LEWIS BALTZ
BERND AND HILLA BECHER
JOE DEAL
FRANK GOHLKE
NICHOLAS NIXON
JOHN SCHOTT
STEPHEN SHORE
HENRY WESSEL, JR.
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