Robert Adams
“If you haven’t loved a tree enough to if not hug it, you at
least want to walk up close enough to touch it as if you
are touching a profound mystery.”
By:Sean Evans
Personal
Profile
• Born in Orange. New Jersey, 1937
• Adams received a BA from the University of Redlands in
California and a PhD in English from the University of Southern
California.
• Received a variety of awards for his photographs and acts of
kindness towards the natural world
• Has been honored around the country through shows in
museums such as; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yale
University Art Gallery, New Haven, Denver Art Museum and
Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Currently lives and remains working with his wife in
Northwestern Oregon. Pbs.org
His Big
Idea!
•
•
•
•
•
His big developed from his love of the outdoors, which played an
important role in his childhood and the relationship he had with his
parents.
Began taking pictures of landscapes
After realizing that these landscape pictures, though very beautiful,
were not going to bring him success.
His classmates suggested that he take pictures of houses and towns in
Colorado, were he was teaching at the time
While taking these pictures in Colorado he really began working
towards his Big Idea which soon became ecology and the conservation
of the natural world and the ways that humans disturb it.
– Going further with his big idea, Roberts looked to show the
hope that may be there. This can be seen in his photographs
all together and he shows this by not only photography the
disturbance of nature but also the beauty that exists that has
not yet been affected by human growth. Pbs.org
“An underlying tension in Adams’s body of work is the contradiction
between landscapes visibly transformed or scarred by human
presence and the inherent beauty of light and land rendered by the
camera. Adams’s complex photographs expose the hollowness of the
19th Century American doctrine of Manifest Destiny, expressing
somber indignation at the idea (still alive in the 21st Century) that the
West represents an unlimited natural resource for human
consumption.” pbs.org
Looking Past Citrus Groves into the San
Bernardino Valley; Northeast of Riverside,
California, 1983Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20
inches
From Lookout Mountain, at Buffalo
Bill's Grave. Jefferson County,
Colorado1970Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14
inches
What are some ways that
humans disturb nature?
What are some ways that we can do
to help preserve nature?
Photographing the
West
• Began by Photographing basic landscapes in
an effort to capture the beauty.
• Then moved towards working toward his big
idea by combining the elements of nature
with human elements, such as roads, cars,
houses, etc.
• With photographing the West he was amazed
by the beauty that the Colorado sunlight
presented to him, and he was shocked to see
how beautiful a photograph could be even if it
is of something so sad as the destruction of
nature. Pbs.org
•
•
East from Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder County, 1975, Gelatin silver
print, 11 x 14 inches (left)
Burning Oil Sludge, Boulder County, Colorado 1974Gelatin silver
print, 11 x 14 inches (right)
– Each of these photographs are perfect examples of Robert
Adam’s big idea. In the first one he combines the element of
nature, which is a dark hedgerow which wraps around a distant
suburban city (the human element disturbing the natural).
– With the photograph on the right of the smoke from oil, it shows
how human technology is ruining the natural scenery of the
Colorado plains.
Pbs.org
Quotations About the
Work
•
•
"There’s a picture of mine that I’m happy with, taken above Boulder,
Colorado....We’re up on a foothill, probably a thousand feet above
Boulder. The bottom of the picture is a kind of bowl of dark trees. And in
this bowl is the city of Boulder and beyond it a view of the plains. To me
that’s an unusually successful picture because it suggests some of the
contradictory nature of the Western experience."- Robert Adams
"Light is a physical thing that youﾕre working with. It’s also obviously
metaphor. It’s what you’re working with to arrive at metaphors. Itﾕs the
age-old symbol for truth. So it’s loaded. But, fundamentally, it’s just a
deeply mysterious, compelling ingredient for your understanding of life
and your response to it....It’s at the center of why and how one makes
pictures."- Robert Adams
Pbs.org
"Untitled"1981Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches
"Untitled"1981Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches
"Colorado Springs, Colorado"1968Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14
inches
"Newly Completed Tract House, Colorado Springs,
Colorado"1968Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches
Pbs.org
His thoughts on the houses shown above; “Few of the
new houses will stand in fifty years; linoleum buckles on
counter tops, and unseasoned lumber twists walls out
of plumb before the first occupants arrive
Visible out picture windows, however, are fragments of
open sky and long views that obscurely make radiant
even what frightens us”
Influence
• Began shooting landscapes with Ansel Adam’s
photographs
• Liked how Ansel Adams showed beauty through light
• Liked the ideas of Lewis Hine, a photographer of the
early nineteen hundreds
– Robert Adams formed his big idea by studying
Lewis Hine’s work, some of which surrounded ideas
about child labor issues.
• Robert Adams liked how Hine “…showed what was
good so that we would value it, and what was bad so
that we would want to change it. Pbs.org
What are some of the ways
Robert Adams showed hope
in his photographs?
Turning Back
Time
• Turning Back Time is a book
of Robert Adams’ that looks
closely at the problem of
deforestation
• This collection of
photographs honors trees in
different ways and at
different stages of their
lives.
• With some of his pictures of
Poplars in this book, Adams
uses them as a small dose
of hope.
Pbs.org
•"Kerstin, old growth stump from early cutting,
surrounded by the remains of recently cut small
trees, on Humbug Mountain, Clatsop County,
Oregon"1999-2003From the series "Turning Back"
Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches
Why is deforestation such a
problem?
How do you think Robert Adams’
photography of deforestation help’s
the fight against it?
"A second growth stump on top of a first growth stump,
Coos County, Oregon"
1999-2003 From the series "Turning Back" Gelatin
silver print, 14 x 11 inches
"Waste in a Clear-cut, Clatsop County,
Oregon"1999-2003From the series "Turning Back"
Gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches
"Stacking the de-limbed trunks of an immature
'harvest,' Columbia County, Oregon"1999-2003From
the series "Turning Back" Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14
inches
"Sitka Spruce, Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County,
Oregon"1999-2003From the series "Turning Back"
Gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches pbs.org
Works
Cited
Adams, Robert. The New West. 1974, Colorado
University Press: Colorado.
Pbs.org. Art: 21. Robert Adams. 28. Sept.
09.http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/adams/in
dex.html.>