NYT Adams

[Bill_1856]

"Robert Adams's photos can seem to be saying nothing at all"

In the interest of fairness and self-education I made a trip to the library today to look some more at Adams' work. They had "Listening the River," and why we Photograph," (which is already in my library), but "West from the Columbia" has disappeared from the shelves. My conclusion: his photographs "seem to be saying nothing at all" because, despite his eloquent prose, they do indeed have nothing to say.

[paulr]

"... they do indeed have nothing to say."

wow, so everyone who loves his work must be hallucinating. thank you so much for clearing that up for me.

it really rubs me the wrong way when people write defensive nonsense like this when they don't get something. if you don't get it, say you don't get it. if you don't see it, say you don't see it. but to authoritatively announce that there's nothing there is both presumptuous and ridiculous. it suggests that the whole world of people who love something or collect it or study it must be engaged in some kind of conspiracy.

it's great that you made the effort to look at the work. it's sad that you assume that anything worth seeing will be obvious to you with a single viewing. and sadder that you so easily dismiss it.

[John Brownlow]

As they say in my home town: none so deaf as them that won't hear.

God bless Robert Adams.

[Kirk Gittings]

I wrote my masters thesis (1983) about the history of American landscape photography and focused on contrasting the aesthetics of AA and RA. My original intention was to contrast the two, but as I got to know RA I began to see an evolution rather than a contradiction and came to deeply appreciate his writings, his art, who he is as a person and his profound vision of the American West.

[paulr]

"I began to see an evolution rather than a contradiction ..."

this is exactly what i see, and why it's always struck me as strange when people see a dichotomy. the main difference seems to be that ansel sticks fairly close to the esthetic of nineteenth century romantic painting, even when he adopts the lessons of modernism.

but if you look at weston it's a different story. there's a straight line continuum from weston's early modernist phase to his landscape phase to his social landscape phase; walker evans continues on the same trajectory; then guys like friedlander and eggleston and robert adams continue it further still. excetp that r. adams maintains the most traditional roots of the late 20th century guys; he takes as much from the vision of the 19th century survey photographers as he does from the modernists.

i think the misunderstanding is all about subtlety. some work wears its emotions on its shirt sleeves; some doesn't. maybe if you're accustomed to the former it's difficult to see the point of the latter. if anything, my prejudice has slowly crept the other way. i'm more and more easily bored by work that seems to be telling me how to feel.

[Kirk Gittings]

To me "from the Missouri West" is both a masterwork and a milestone in the history of American Landscape Photography. It is in many ways a lament to the failed optimism of the romanticism of the previous generation.

[Kirk Gittings]

His images also remind me of the mental landscapes conjured up by the writings of Cormack McCarthy, one of my favorite western authors.