| Robert Adams | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 8, 1937 Orange, New Jersey |
| Spouse | Kerstin Mornestam |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Photography |
| Website | http://artgallery.yale.edu/adams/ |
Robert Adams (born May 8, 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through the book The New West (1974) and the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975). He was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in photography in 1973 and 1980, and he received the MacArthur Foundation's MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. In 2009, he received the Hasselblad Award for his achievements in photography.[1] He is represented by the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.
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Adams is the son of Lois Hickman Adams and Ross Adams. He was born on May 8, 1937 in Orange, New Jersey, and lived in Madison, Wisconsin briefly before moving to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, in 1952. As a child he developed chronic bronchial problems, and part of the reason his family moved to Colorado was to help alleviate those problems. At age 15 he began to experience chronic bronchial problems, and at age 12 he contracted polio in his back, left arm, and hand but was able to recover. He continued to suffer from asthma and allergy problems. He has one younger sister, named Carolyn.[2]
During his childhood, Adams often accompanied his father on walks and hikes through the woods. Adams was a Boy Scout and worked in the summers of his adolescence boys' camps in the Rocky Mountains. In 1955, he hunted for the last time.
During high school, he studied architectural drawing for a year.
In 1959, Adams enrolled in the University of Colorado, Boulder for his freshman year, but decided to transfer the next year to the University of Redlands in California. He received his B.A. in English from Redlands in 1959, and then went on to USC for his postgraduate study in English, from which he received his Ph.D. in English in 1965. In 1960, he married Kerstin Mornestam, originally from Sweden, whom he had met at Redlands. In 1962 they moved back to Colorado, and Adams began teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. In 1963, Adams bought a 35mm reflex camera and began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. He soon read complete sets of Camera Work and Aperture at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He learned photographic technique from Myron Wood, a professional photographer who lived in Colorado. In 1967, he began to teach only part-time in order to have more time to photograph.. He met John Szarkowski on a trip to New York City in 1969. The museum later bought four of his prints.[2]
The Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited a mid-career retrospective of his work in 1989.
Adams's master sets are held at the Yale University Art Gallery, which organized "The Place We Live," the definitive retrospective exhibition and publication of his work.
In 2008, he was exposed at Les Rencontres d'Arles festival, France.
Between 1968 and 1971, Adams photographed the new suburban developments that were being built along the Colorado Front Range.[3] The pictures were influential in their portrayal of the American West as a place of homogenized experience as well as in their contradiction between the beauty of the landscape and human presence.[4]
In 1973 and 1974, Adams created a comprehensive document that dispelled romantic notions of the American West. His pictures show tract housing with mountain ranges in the distance, trailer lots devoid of people, suburban streets through generic windows, shopping mall interiors, and parking lots.
An early publication by Adams that included pictures that were the in an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 1978 and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1979.
Between 1999 and 2003, Adams embarked on a series of photographs centering on the deforestation of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The subtext for the series was the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which led to the opening of the West for commercial interests. The series ends with a group of pictures taken in eastern Oregon, which, according to Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, "suggest that perfect moments can still be found in the remote, beleaguered West, where Mr. Adams lives."[5]
A revised edition of Adams's early book "Summer Nights" published by Aperture, Inc.
![[1]](http://americanart.si.edu/images/1983/1983.110.7_1b.jpg){kind=link}
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