Robert Adams, Nehalem Spit, Tillamook County, Oregon, from the series “Sea Stories, This Day,” 1999-2009
Listen to this: this week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features a rare interview with Robert Adams.
A few moments which caught my attention on first listen:
-Adams’ anecdote of the “gift photograph” in surburia that changed his life.
-The discussion of landscapes of environmental destruction versus war landscapes.
-Does picture-making change anything?
This quote:
My father and I used to run rivers, before that became common. So, O’Sullivan’s pictures in canyons are among my favorites in all of Western photography.
Click through for the interview and images discussed in the podcast.
Mars Curiosity & empty space photography
Robert Adams, Quarried Mesa Top, Pueblo County, Colorado, 1978
Robert Adams wrote a great essay, “In the Nineteenth-century West,” which was originally printed in a book of landcape photography (reprinted in the must-own collection Why People Photograph, page 133), but it’s relavent to Mars photography. Comparing the painters and photographers from the period, specifically Timothy O’Sullivan, when they painted similar scenes, Adams believes the photographers’ work holds up better. He uses Thomas Eakins as an example of a talented painter from the east that flailed in the west.
Thomas Eakins, 1888
Robert Adams, from Turning Back
Robert Adams, Baker County, Oregon, ca. 2000-2003
click-through for a great sample of RA
Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, Colorado, ca. 1968–1970
Robert Adams, Interstate 25, Eden, Colorado, 1968
Robert Adams
Robert Adams
