Robert Adams is a photographer who has documented the extent and the limits of our damage to the American West, recording there, in over fifty books of pictures, both reasons to despair and to hope. “The goal,” he has said, “is to face facts but to find a basis for hope. To try for alchemy.” Adams grew up in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Colorado, in each place enjoying the out-of-doors, often in company with his father. At age twenty-five, as a college English teacher with summers off, he learned photography, choosing as his first subjects early prairie churches and early Hispanic art, subjects of unalloyed beauty. After spending time in Scandinavia with his Swedish wife, Kerstin, however, he realized that there were complexities in the American geography that merited exploration.

Publications

1970 -White Churches of the Plains. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press,
1974 - The Architecture and Art of Early Hispanic Colorado. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press,
1974 - The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press
1977 - Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press
1978 - Prairie. Denver: Denver Art Museum
1980 -From the Missouri West. Aperture
1981 -Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. Millerton, NY: Aperture
1982 -Summer Nights, Walking. Millerton, NY: Aperture; New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
1984 -Our Lives and Our Children: Photographs Taken Near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Millerton, NY: Aperture
1985 -Summer Nights. New York: Aperture
1986 -Los Angeles Spring. New York: Aperture
1988 -Perfect Times, Perfect Places. New York: Aperture
1989 - To Make It Home: Photographs of the American West. New York: Aperture
1995 - Cottonwoods. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press
1994 -Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West. New York: Aperture
1994 -Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews by Robert Adams. New York: Aperture
1995 - West from the Columbia: Views at the River Mouth. New York: Aperture
1996 - Beauty in Photography. New York: Aperture
1995 - What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area, 1970–1974. Hannover, Germany: Stiftung Niedersachsen
1999 - Eden. New York: Roth Horowitz
1999 - I Hear the Leaves and Love the Light. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
1999 -Notes for Friends: Along Colorado Roads. Boulder: University Press of Colorado
2000 -California: Views by Robert Adams of the Los Angeles Basin 1978–1983. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery; New York: Matthew Marks Gallery
2001 -Boddhisattva: A Gandharan Face. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
2002 - Alders. Tucson, AZ: Nazrael
2002 - Sunlight, Solitude, Democracy, Home. Portland, OR: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College
2003 - Commercial Residential. New York: Roth Horowitz
2003 - No Small Journeys: Across Shopping Center Parking Lots, Down City Streets, 1979–1982. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery
2005 - Pine Valley. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
2005 - A Portrait in Landscapes. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
2005 - Turning Back: A Photographic Journal of Re-exploration. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery; New York: Matthew Marks Gallery
2006 -Along Some Rivers: Photographs and Conversation. New York: Aperture
2006 - Interiors 1973–1974. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
2006 - Still Lives at Manzanita. Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli
2007 - Questions for an Overcast Day. Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery
2007 - Time Passes. Paris: Foundation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain
2008 - Close at Hand. Revere, PA: Lodima
2009 - Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area, 1970–1974. Rev. edition, New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2009 - Summer Nights, Walking: Along the Colorado Front Range, 1976–1982. New York: Aperture; New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2010 - Tree Line: Hasselblad Award 2009. Göteborg, Sweden: Hasselblad Foundation; Göttingen, Germany: Steidl
2010 - Gone? Colorado in the 1980s. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl
2010 - What Can We Believe Where? Photographs of the American West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2010 - The Place We Live, a Retrospective Selection of Photographs, 1964–2009. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2011 -Sea Stories. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2011 - This Day: Photographs from Twenty-Five Years, The Northwest Coast. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2012 - Light Balances & ON Any Given Day in Spring. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery; San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery
2012 - Prairie. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2012 - Skogen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2013 - The Question of Hope: Photographs in Western Oregon. Portland, OR: Nazraeli
2017 - Art Can Help. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery
2021 - American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams. New York: Aperture

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1975 - New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
1989 - The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mid-career retrospective
2005–2006 - Turning Back, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
2008 - Rencontres d'Arles festival, Arles, France
2011 - Landscape with Path: Nebraska State Highway 2, High Line Park, New York
2010–2014 - The Place We Live, a Retrospective Selection of Photographs. Retrospective. Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia
2012 - On Any Given Day in Spring and Light Balances, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
2015 - Green/Gray: Photographs in the Los Angeles Basin, Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles
2018 - A Right to Stand, Fondation A Stichting, Brussels. Traveled to Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris
2022 - American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C

Awards

1973 - Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
1973 - Photographer's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
1978 - Photographer's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
1980 - Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
1982 - Peer Award from The Friends of Photography, San Francisco
1987 - Charles Pratt Memorial Award
1994 - MacArthur Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation
1995 - Spectrum International Prize for Photography from the Foundation of Lower Saxony
2006 - Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for the exhibition Turning Back at Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
2009 - Hasselblad Award
2014 - Elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters
2020 - Induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.

Collections

Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR / Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI / Whitney Museum of American Art, New York / Museum of Modern Art, New York / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO / Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX / Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, VT / Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT / National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. / Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Books from Robert ADAMS

Eden

Robert ADAMS

Out of Stock