About Robert Adams

Robert Adams 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 his book The New West and his participation in the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975. He was born on the 8th of May, 1937 in New Jersey, USA and is currently aged 85 years.

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. He uses his photographical skills to capture the impact humans have made on the nature around us.

Adams criticised the idea of romanticism in photography since he believed the impact of human architecture on nature should be presented to the world, instead of being hidden and ignored- in the way romantics do when creating their photographs.

“At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are”

– Robert Adams

Image Analysis

This photograph is a very popular image in the urban landscape photography community to this day. The photo shows a landscape taken from a high face on angle, including an estate of temporary homes at the base of an mountain towering over them. Adams took this photo to show the negative influence humans and their habit of spreading out across natural landscapes has on our world- converting the once beautiful rural landscape into a banal and conventional area. The background consists of the wide, dark toned mountain, which contrasts with the boxy and derivative appearance of the mobile homes in the foreground. This adds a sense of depth to the image, as not only there being a distinct fore and background present in the photo, the heavy contrast between the two distinct factors in the landscapes causes the image to appear more extensive and realistically detailed. The blocky appearances of the houses acts as a dominant feature in the photo, taking our attention away from the nature in the background. Moreover, the divergence between the shapes present in the photo, creates another perception of contrast, the smooth, featureless edge of the mountain contrasting with the harshly shaped structure of the mobile homes below. I think that this photo has quite an isolated mood since their are no visible people in it and the identically boxy mobile homes add to the desolate theme of the photo. The uniform texture of the buildings contrasts with the smooth appearance of the mountain- causing the lined pattern to stand out in the image.