Born in New Jersey Orange (not the fruit or colour), Robert Adams was a well know photographer, creating images mainly in black and white. He captured the traces of human life on the planet, showing people places as a whole, where people could interpret the image as prideful, or horrible.

What I mean by this is that Robert is capturing things for what they are, no real context or meaning behind it. This image shows a pretty big city, with crowded housing on what seems to be purely flat land, which shows humans creations. Although these images are up to interpretation, Robert did have an aim. He wanted “stability and movement in one form”, which in this image could be him showing his hope for change, to show people what has happened to nature, and where it is possibly leading to.

This image does aim to express his sadness for what is happening and empathy towards the land. How there are empty parking lots in this area, and buildings are just scattered around the area, with no care for how much space its using, and how people don’t care about the areas that might be abandoned, which are left to rot away. Until maybe one day that extra space people think little of, will become a rarity on this earth.

In the introduction to his book The New West, Adams talks about the tradition of landscape photography linked to images of the American West with the notion around the concept of the sublime. At the time when Adams’ published the seminal photobook in 1974 people asked him why he turned his camera toward tract homes and billboards. He replied, ‘the question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue – why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks.’