PHOTOGRAPHS
Adams, Robert
U.S. (1937 - )
Development Road in San Timoteo Canyon, San Bernadino County, California
1979
Gelatin silver print
9 x 11 3/16 in. (22.9 x 28.4 cm) image size; 10 7/8 x 13 15/16 in. (27.6 x 35.4 cm) sheet size
Monsen Study Collection of Photography, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen
FA 83.11
Keywords: Series: From the Missouri West, no. 49; Trees; Landscape

In 1975, the photography exhibition New Topographics made its debut, showing works by several artists, including Robert Adams, that depicted the landscape strictly as it was. The captured reality included clear evidence of human habitation and consumption, and marked a departure from idealized depictions of nature that edited out human intervention. The images presented here by Robert Adams were made as a result of his search for finding the majestic in his everyday surroundings. He writes in From the Missouri West “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?” His images, classic landscape photographs recalling the compositions done by Western survey photographers, all contain evidence of the changes created by human presence. By including the influence of humans and “progress” in his images, Adams requires the sublime to contain an element of truth.

-- Label copy for Shifting Ground: Transformed Views of the American Landscape, February 10 to August 20, 2000.