Robert Adams: The New West

Robert Adams: The New West

Originally published in 1974, Robert Adams' The New West signaled a paradigm shift in the photographic representation of American landscapes. Foregoing photography's traditional role of romanticizing the Western landscape, Adams focused instead on the construction of tract and mobile homes, subdivisions, shopping centers and urban sprawl in the suburbs of Colorado Springs and the Denver area. Adams transmuted these zones with his minimalist vision of their austerity; as he has noted, "no place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." Objective and direct, Adams' photographs, rendered in his signature middle-gray scale, unsentimentally depict a despoiled landscape washed in the intense Colorado sunlight. Today The New West stands alongside Walker Evans' American Photographs, Robert Frank's The Americans and Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places in the pantheon of landmark projects on American culture and society. This second reissue of the classic publication has been recreated from Adams' original prints, and will be released ahead of a major traveling exhibition that will launch in 2010. Foreword by John Szarkowski.Review"Irony abounds here: a neon gas station sign sports the word 'Frontier,' and a 'Buffalo for Sale' sign along the highway boasts one lonely buffalo in the photograph. Cow culture has given way to car culture--drive-in restaurants and movie theaters. Graffiti is scribbled on Lookout Mountain--modern-day cave paintings." --B&W: Black & White Magazine"Adams' book helped create a new kind of landscape photography, tough-minded about the mess humans make, that's been pursued by Richard Misrach, Edward Burtynsky and scores of others. " -- Richard Lacayo --Time Magazine