Overview

"'Though Robert Adams' book assumes no moral postures, it does have a moral. Its moral is that the landscape is, for us, the place we live.' - John Szarkowski The open American West is nearly gone. The New West is a photographic essay about what came to fill it-freeways, tract homes, low-rise business buildings and signs. In five sequences of pictures taken along the front wall of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Robert Adams has documented a representative sampling of the whole suburban Southwest. These views have a double power. At first they shock; normally we try to forget the commercial squalor they depict. Slowly, however, they reveal aspects of the geography-the shape of the land itself, for example-that are beyond man's harm. Adams has written that ""all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty,"" and his photographs show this. Originally published in 1974, The New West is now regarded as a classic, standing alongside Walker Evans's American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans in the pantheon of landmark volumes of photography exploring American culture and society. This new edition marks the book's fortieth anniversary and the beginning of a long-term commitment by Steidl to publish the full extent Robert Adams's remarkable body of work."

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9783869309002

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Reviews

Robert Adams, in his landmark 1974 collection The New West, now reissued in a gorgeous edition by Steidl, is in many ways [Timothy] O'Sullivan's truest heir.--Michael Robbins The Chicago Tribune

There is an inherent, inescapable allure, stemming from the photographer's aptitude for composition and ability to encapsulate the atmospheric quality of light so unique to the area... Through his exceptionally executed, deeply poetic works, we are reminded that we - with our limited life spans and endless aspirations - pale in comparison to the longstanding landscapes that surround us.--Daisy Woodward AnOther Magazine

Author Information

Robert Adams was born in 1937 in Orange, New Jersey. After earning a PhD in English literature and teaching the subject for several years at Colorado College, he became a photographer in the mid-1960s. Adams has published more than 40 books of photographs, with the changing landscape of the American West as his primary subject; his books with Steidl include Gone? (2009), The Place We Live (2013) and From the Missouri West (2018). Adams lives and works with his wife in northwest Oregon.

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