Robert Adams
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Adams, Robert Hickman (1937-) American nature photographer
After earning a doctorate in English and becoming a college professor, Adams decided to shift careers and focus on his true love, photography, in 1970. Since then, he's made a name for himself with more than 20 books, mainly chronicling the, American West, particularly the Colorado landscape, in and around Denver. He attributes his affinity for the Western landscape to boyhood adventures such as hiking, river rafting, and camping. His black and white photographs of characteristically spare landscapes have brought him two National Endowment for the Arts Photography fellowships (1973, 1978), a Guggenheim award (1973), and a MacArthur fellowship (1994).
“The issue is not just that land developers have unbalanced the ecology and made much of the geography ugly. What strikes so painfully is, at least in the perspective of our brief lives, they have destroyed the places where we became, and would like to continue to become, ourselves.”
“...if we consider the difference between William Henry Jackson packing in his cameras by mule, and the person stepping out of his car to take a picture with an Instamatic, it becomes clear how some of our space has vanished; if the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space 'in no time' is to have denied its reality.”
“Art does not deny that evil is real, but it places evil in a context that implies an affirmation; the structure of the picture, which is a metaphor for the structure of the Creation, suggests that evil is not final.”
“At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect - a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.”
“If as individuals we can improve the geography only slightly, if at all, perhaps the more appropriately scaled subject for reshaping is ourselves.”
“How can we hope, after all, to see a tree or rock or clear north sky if we do not adopt a little of their mode of life, a little of their time?...if the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space "in no time" is to have denied its reality...”
“We catch ourselves thinking, in the bitterness that can accompany the unexpected sound of an aluminum can bending underfoot, that it would have been merciful if Columbus had been wrong and the world flat, with an edge from which to fall, rather than a circular cage that returns us to our mistakes. The geography seems hopeless.”
“Teachers must, I discovered, have a gift to teach and the compulsion to use it. And faith. Anything less won't carry you through.”
“C.S. Lewis admitted, when he was asked to set forth his beliefs, that he never felt less sure of them than when he tried to speak of them. Photographers know this frailty. To them words are a pallid, diffuse way of describing and celebrating what matters. Their gift is to see what will be affecting as a print. Mute. ”