Robert Adams (photographer)

For other persons named Robert Adams, see Robert Adams (disambiguation).

Robert Adams
Born	(1937-05-08) May 8, 1937 Orange, New Jersey
Spouse	Kerstin Mornestam
Nationality	American
Field	Photography
Website	http://artgallery.yale.edu/adams/

Robert Adams (born May 8, 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through the book The New West (1974) and the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975). He was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in photography in 1973 and 1980, and he received the MacArthur Foundation's MacArthur Fellowship in 1994.

He is represented by the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

Early life and career

Robert Adams, son of Lois Hickman Adams and Ross Adams, was born on May 8, 1937 in Orange, New Jersey. In 1940 they moved to Madison, New Jersey where his younger sister Carolyn was born. Then in 1947 he moved to Madison, Wisconsin for five years, where he contracted polio at age 12 in 1949 in his back, left arm, and hand but was able to recover. Moving one last time in 1952 his family goes to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, when his father secured a job in Denver. His family moved to Colorado partly because of the chronic bronchial problems that he suffered from in Madison, New Jersey around age 5 as an attempt to help alleviate those problems. He continued to suffer from asthma and allergy problems.

During his childhood, Adams often accompanied his father on walks and hikes through the woods on Sunday afternoons. He also enjoyed playing baseball in open fields and working with his father on carpentry projects. He was an active Boy Scout, and was also active with the Methodist church that his family attended. He and his father made several raft trips through Dinosaur National Monument, and during his adolescent years he worked at boys' camps at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. He also took trips on pack horses and went mountain climbing. He and his sister began visiting the Denver Art Museum. Adams also learned to like reading and it soon became an enjoyment for him. In 1955, he hunted for the last time.

Adams enrolled in the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1955, and attended it for his freshman year, but decided to transfer the next year to the University of Redlands in California where he received his B.A. in English from Redlands in 1959. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Southern California and he received his Ph.D. in English in 1965.

In 1960 while at Redlands, he met and married Kerstin Mornestam, Swedish native, who shared the same interest in the arts and nature. Robert and Kerstin spent their first few summers together in Oregon along the coast, where they took long walks on the beach and spent their evenings reading.

Work

In 1962 they moved back to Colorado, and Adams began teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. In 1963, Adams bought a 35mm reflex camera and began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. He soon read complete sets of Camera Work and Aperture at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He learned photographic technique from Myron Wood, a professional photographer who lived in Colorado. While finishing his dissertation, he began to photograph in 1964. In 1967, he began to teach only part-time in order to have more time to photograph. He met John Szarkowski, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern art, on a trip to New York City in 1969. The museum later bought four of his prints. In 1970, he began working as a full-time photographer.

Bodies of Work

1964-1974

The Plains

Artist Statement

“We tend to define the plains by what is absent, checking maps to find how far we have to drive before we get to something—to mountains in the West or cities in the East. What, after all, are we to make of wheat fields, one-horse towns, and sky?

Mystery in this landscape is a certainty, an eloquent one. There is everywhere silence—a silence in thunder, in wind, in the call of doves, even a silence in the closing of a pickup door. If you are crossing the plains, leave the interstate and find a back road on which to walk; listen.”

—R.A., 1978

Sweden

Artist Statement

“Öglunda, July 12: The old family house is centered beneath big trees. Behind it, a wooded hill from which one can see Lake Vänern forty miles away. Nearby—hay fields, farm wagons, cherry orchards, stone fences, one dirt auto road lacking a straight kilometer, a stone church (next to which Kerstin’s grandmother is buried; she was born on the farm adjacent to this one), a lake, flocks of blackbird . . .”

—R.A., 1968

Late Hispanic Settlement

Artist Statement

“At Viejo San Acacio, mass is observed in a church dating from 1856; outside, the only sounds are as they must have been earlier—of the wind, and the flat, soft ring of sheep bells. To go inside, in the brilliance and heat of a July day, is to discover stillness. Shadows are soft and the temperature mild. Few buildings give so strong a feeling of sanctuary as do early, thick-walled adobes.”

—R.A., 1974

Eden

Artist Statement

“Eden, Colorado, is named after a railroad official and not the Biblical paradise. To the east of the interstate highway that bisects it are railroad tracks, gas tanks, and a prefabricated metal shed. To the west, a roadhouse (closed), a military salvage lot, a car-wrecking yard, and the Westland truck stop. Extending beyond along the freeway are billboards advertising whiskey, real estate, and ice.”

—R.A., 1968

The New West

Artist Statement

“Many have asked, pointing incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue—why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks?

One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home, and that to do it we have to see the facts without blinking. We need to watch, for example, as an old woman, alone, is forced to carry her groceries in August heat over a fifty acre parking lot; then we know, safe from the comforting lies of profiteers, that we must begin again.

Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.”

—R.A., 1974

What We Bought

Artist Statement

“Denver was founded in 1861 by gold seekers. Its history has been a cycle of booms and depressions. Among the most startling periods of growth occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, when Colorado’s oil and military and tourist industries all prospered, and when businesses from throughout the United States relocated to Denver at the request of employees who were attracted by the region’s natural beauty.In a few years, however, the area’s ruin would be testament to a bargain we had tried to strike. The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy. They document a separation from ourselves, and in turn from the natural world that we professed to love.”

—R.A., 1995

1975-1989

From the Missouri West

Artist Statement

“Exploration of the West began in the nineteenth century at the Missouri River. On its banks pioneers understood themselves to be at the edge of a sublime landscape, one that they believed would be redemptive. My own ancestors, as it happens, settled along the river, and my grandfather made enthusiastic trips onto the Dakota prairies to make panoramic photographs. For these reasons, and because I had lost my way in the suburbs, I decided to try to rediscover some of the land forms that had impressed our forebears. Was there remaining in the geography a strength that might help sustain us as it had them?”

—R.A., 1980

Summer Nights

Artist Statement

“Still photographs often differ from life more by their silence than by the immobility of their subjects. Landscape pictures tend to converge with life, however, on summer nights, when the sounds outside, after we call in children and close garage doors, are small—the whir of moths, the snap of a stick.”

—R.A., 1985

Ludlow

Artist Statement

“On the D&RG Railroad south out of Walsenburg, Colorado, there stand the remains of a small coal-mining community named Ludlow—three abandoned shacks and a monument put up by the United Mine Workers.

I drove eighty miles out of my way one morning in order to photograph the memorial—a statue of a man, woman, and child. The site is lonely, a nondescript place on dry flats; that day the wind blew, the sun was cold, and my equipment was unfamiliar. I found myself saying over and over again, please, just give me these pictures.”

—R.A., 1981

Our Parents, Our Children

Artist Statement

“American nuclear and thermonuclear bombs are equipped with plutonium detonators manufactured at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The factory is located ten miles upwind from Denver, Colorado.

Armaments built at risk to Denver become part of a worldwide system so open to error and malfunction that it is reasonable to believe many of us will, at a scarcely imaginable but exact time, die from them.

If we confront this conclusion we want almost at once to give up, to be free of what seems impossible hope. When we can find in ourselves the will to keep asking questions of politicians, it is, I think, after we have noticed the individuals with whom we live. How mysteriously absolute each is. How many achieve, in moments of reflection or joy or concern, a kind of heroism. Each refutes the idea of acceptable losses.”

—R.A., 1983

Los Angeles Spring

Artist Statement

“Southern California was, by the reports of those who lived there at the turn of the century, beautiful; there were live oaks on the hills, orchards across the valleys, and ornamental cypress, palms, and eucalyptus lining the roads. Even now we can almost extrapolate an Eden from what has lasted—from the architecture of old eucalyptus trunks, for example, and from the astringent perfume of the trees’ flowers as it blends with the sweetness of orange blossoms.

What citrus remain today, however, are mostly abandoned, scheduled for removal, and large eucalyptus have often been vandalized, like the hundreds west of Fontana that have been struck head high with shotgun fire.

Whether those trees that stand are reassuring is a question for a lifetime. All that is clear is the perfection of what we were given, the unworthiness of our response, and the certainty, in view of our current deprivation, that we are judged.”

—R.A., 1986

Cottonwoods

Artist Statement

“I often think of a line by Edward Thomas, “trees and us—imperfect friends.” Cottonwoods have been our friends for a long while. The Arapaho believed that the stars came from cottonwoods, from the glistening sap at the joints of twigs. Immigrant wagon trains followed along from one grove to the next, with cottonwoods serving as landmarks, shelter, and fuel. But the human side of this friendship has weakened. Agribusiness now wages wars on cottonwoods because the trees compete for water, and suburban developers replace them with conveniently small but ecologically disruptive species like Russian olive. Main Street in Longmont used to be lined with cottonwoods, but they were all cut down.”

—R.A., 1994

The Pawnee National Grassland

Artist Statement

“The Pawnee National Grassland, where these pictures were taken, is a reserve established during the 1930s in northeastern Colorado to rehabilitate a part of the dust bowl. Though recovery has been incomplete, and though in the summer the land is rented to the cattle industry, in April and May it is spacious. It has a long history and future. The birds that rise from the grass seem almost weightless.”

—R.A., 1988

Along Some Rivers

Artist Statement

“In middle age I revisited a number of marginal but beautiful landscapes that I had taken for granted when I was a boy. As I walked through them I sometimes asked myself whether in coming years they would survive overpopulation, corporate capitalism, and new technology. On those days when I was lucky, however, my questions fell away into the quiet and the light.

It has been many years now since I left Colorado, and occasionally friends there tell me of what has been lost. We share our griefs, but not infrequently the conversation turns to recollecting scarcely believable glories—near miracles—and we pledge to look again.”

—R.A., 2010

1990-2009

The Pacific

Artist Statement

“Of all the sacred places on the coast, none is more comforting than where rivers join the sea. By the rivers’ disappearance we are reminded of life’s passing, while by the ocean’s beauty we accept it, in a hope we cannot explain.

At the end of the Columbia River there is an especially complex weaving of suggestion. This is the farthest point to which Lewis and Clark traveled in their exploration of the American frontier. Today the shore of the estuary is becoming crowded with human activity—there are condominiums, malls, airports, mooring basins—even while the estuary itself remains home to a reduced but still significant population of marine animals. The air is usually clean, but the river carries dioxins from paper mills and radionuclides from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.”

—R.A., 1995

Turning Back

Artist Statement

“More than ninety percent of the original forest in the American Northwest has been clearcut at least once. The large stumps in these pictures are remnants of an ancient woods where trees commonly grew to be five hundred or more years old. The small stumps are what is left of a recently “harvested” monoculture, an industrial forest sustained by artificial fertilizers and selective herbicides and cut in its infancy.

Will this practice eventually exhaust the soil and end in permanent deforestation? There are numerous areas in the world where this has happened, among them parts of China, a country that has recently banned clearcutting. Efforts to restrict clearcutting in the American Northwest have, however, mostly failed.As I recorded these scenes, I found myself asking many questions, among them:

What of equivalent value have we inherited in exchange for the original forest?

Is there a relationship between clearcutting and war, the landscape of one being in some respects like the landscape of the other? Does clearcutting originate in disrespect? Does it teach violence? Does it contribute to nihilism?

Why did I almost never meet parents walking here with their children?”

—R.A., 2005

Bodhisattva

Artist Statement

“Gandhara was a historical region in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was located on the route by which Buddhism was transmitted out of India to China, and was also, in 327 B.C., the easternmost area to which Alexander the Great brought Hellenistic culture. Gandharan art often depicts Buddhist subjects but does so in a style that reflects both Western and Eastern iconographic traditions.The pictures are of a fragment of Gandharan sculpture that measures just 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 6 inches. It is made of stucco, was once painted, and dates from the second to third century A.D. The representation is of an ideal—a bodhisattva, a person who understands but who has chosen to remain involved in life on behalf of others.”

—R.A., 2001

Pine Valley

Artist Statement

“Four hundred and fifty miles east of the Pacific, near what was once the Oregon Trail, there is a small community in Baker County named Halfway. Kerstin and I were unexpectedly befriended there by a person who invited us to stay in her home, a sanctuary amid apple trees, pastures, and cottonwoods. We were reminded, as the days passed, of Edward Thomas’s ideal, of “a garden I need never go beyond.”

Photography is inherently fragmentary, and I find I base my faith on perfect moments.”

—R.A., 2005

Alder Leaves

Artist Statement

“What would account for the condition of the leaves—drought, insects, rocky ground, disease, herbicide, wind?

Are the leaves beautiful?

Is there something wry in the hieroglyphics? And something humorous about a person taking photographs, the camera handheld, between gusts of wind?”

—R.A., 2007

Sea Stories, This Day

Artist Statement

“The trees stand on a hillside exposed to the prevailing wind. Even on a quiet afternoon the trunks sway a little.

Stanley Elkin suggested that “all books are the Book of Job,” and in general he was right. Certainly many writers and picture makers want to repeat in a fresh way what the voice out of the whirlwind said, that we are not the creator, and that rather than ask an explanation we ought to attend an inventory of wonders—the Pleiades, the morning star, the sun, the rain, the grass, the raven, the whale. Common to each is beauty. And so a promise.”

—R.A., 2009

Exhibitions and collections

The Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited a mid-career retrospective of Adams's work in 1989. His master sets are held at the Yale University Art Gallery, which organized "The Place We Live," the definitive retrospective exhibition and publication of his work. Two exhibitions of photographs from the "Turning Back" series were held in 2005, one at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the other at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2008, he was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France.

In 2012, Adams worked with curators at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on selecting 169 prints from his own holdings for the museum to acquire.

Recognition

Adams is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Photographer’s Fellowships, two John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships, and the Peer Award of The Friends of Photography. In 2009, he received the Hasselblad Award for his achievements in photography.

Famous photographs

Robert Adams, On Signal Hill, Overlooking Long Beach, 1983, gelatin-silver print, 9 x 11 inches

• East from Flagstaff Mountain, 1975
• Burning Oil Sludge North of Denver, 1973

Published books

• White Churches of the Plains , Colorado Associated University Press, Boulder, CO (1970).

• The Architecture and Art of Early Hispanic Colorado , Colorado Associated University Press, Boulder, CO (1974).

• The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range , Colorado Associated University Press, Boulder, CO (1974).

• Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area , Colorado Associated University Press, Boulder, CO (1977).

• Prairie , Denver Art Museum, CO (1978).

• From the Missouri West , Aperture, Millerton, N.Y. (1980).

• Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values , Aperture, Millerton, NY (1981).

• Our Lives and Our Children: Photographs Taken Near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant , Aperture, Millerton, NY (1984).

• Summer Nights , Aperture, NY (1985).

• Los Angeles Spring , Aperture, NY (1986).

• Perfect Times, Perfect Places , Aperture, NY (1988).

• To Make It Home: Photographs of the American West , Aperture, NY (1989).

• Cottonwoods , Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington D.C. (1994).

• Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West , Aperture, NY (1994).

• Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews , Aperture, NY (1994).

• West from the Columbia: Views at the River Mouth , Aperture, NY (1995).

• Beauty in Photography, Aperture, NY (1996).

• What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area, 1970-1974 ", Stiftung Niedersachsen, Hannover, Germany (1995). 2nd edition, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2009).

• Eden , Roth Horowitz, NY (1999).

• I Hear the Leaves and Love the Light , Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (1999).

• Notes for Friends: Along Colorado Roads , University Press of Colorado, Boulder (1999).

• California: Views by Robert Adams of the Los Angeles Basin 1978-1983 , Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2000).

• Boddhisattva: A Gandharan Face', Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2001).

• Alders , Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2002).

• Sunlight, Solitude, Democracy, Home, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery / Reed College., Portland, OR (2002).
• Commercial Residential , Roth Horowitz, NY (2003).

• No Small Journeys: Across Shopping Center Parking Lots, Down City Streets, 1979-1982 ", Matthew Marks Gallery, NY (2003).

• Pine Valley , Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2005).

• A Portrait in Landscapes ", Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2005).

• Turning Back: A Photographic Journal of Re-exploration , Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2005).

• Along Some Rivers: Photographs and Conversation , Aperture, NY (2006).

• Interiors 1973-1974 , Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2006).

• Still Lives at Manzanita , Nazraeli Press, Tucson, AZ (2006).

• Questions for an Overcast Day , Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco (2007).

• Time Passes , Foundation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris (2007).

• Close at Hand", Lodima Press, Revere, PA (2008).

• Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area, 1970-1974 , Rev. edition, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2009).

• Summer Nights, Walking: Along the Colorado Front Range, 1976-1982", Aperture, New York, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2009).

• Tree Line: Hasselblad Award 2009 ", Hasselblad Foundation, Göteborg, Sweden, and Steidl, Göttingen, Germany, (2009).

• Gone? Colorado in the 1980s http://artgallery.yale.edu/adams/book.php?id=Gone?:%20Colorado%20in%20the%201980s&sort=date", Steidl, Göttingen, Germany (2010).

• What Can We Believe Where? Photographs of the American West", Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2010).

• Sea Stories", Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2011).

• This Day: Photographs from Twenty-Five Years, The Northwest Coast", Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (2011).

• The Place We Live, a Retrospective Selection of Photographs, 1964-2009,Yale University Art Gallery, New Have,CT (2011).

External links

• Robert Adams
• Robert Adams: The Place We Live, a retrospective selection of photographs
• Masters of Photography
• "Robert Adams photographs taken at twilight". Photography. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2007-08-25.