Robert Adams (born May 8th, 1937) is an American photographer who focused on the changing landscape of the American west. His work first because popularised after he participated in the New Topographics exhibition (1975), and his book the New West (1974).

During his childhood Robert Adams liked Adams often accompanied his father on walks and hikes through the woods on Sunday afternoons. He also enjoyed playing baseball in open fields and working with his father on carpentry projects. He was an active Boy Scout, and was also active with the Methodist church that his family attended. He enjoyed being outdoors and that likely sparked his care for the natural environment, and how a lot of it is getting destroyed.

he first anticipated he would be in a career of teaching, but due to his passion for nature and how he saw it in it, he when down a path of photography. He bought a 35-mm reflex camera, taught himself the fundamentals of photography, and began making pictures infused with a love for the geography of his home state.

His vision is inspired by his joy in nature’s inherent beauty, yet tempered by his dismay at its exploitation and degradation. Adams uses photography to express his love for the landscape and to understand how urban and industrial growth have changed it, all the while insisting that beauty in the world has not been entirely eclipsed.

Photo Analysis

The photograph pictures a two-story house whose half-timber framing appears decorative rather than structural. It was taken under bright noon sunlight, the house’s shadow barely extends into its grassless yard. The house is almost covering the vast organic mountain range from behind, which is appearing much more durable that the uninspired, geometric house in the suburb. The composition creates a deadpan effect, added with the vast emptiness of the background and the lack of life. The lack of life creates a feeling of isolation, almost as a metaphor to how we are slowly isolating are self’s to the natural environment.

Other:

This is my New Topographics virtual gallery. I chose these images because they represent The New Topographics style the best. And with the image in the middle, the buildings range from very old to extremely modern, which suggests that the surroundings have been built up over time.

Beginning in the 1970s, a group of photographers including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Nickolas Nixon were associated with the 1975 exhibition New Topographic; this was Photographs of man- altered landscapes. The exhibition displayed their work, it showed how they focused on different kind of landscapes rather than those found naturally or at national parks. They showed landscape photography in a new way, focusing on urban landscape areas around America post-war, such as suburban areas like freeways, gas stations, or industrial parks. This was a new reflection to the suburban world around them, as they began to explore different and new ways of capturing landscapes.

The New Topographic show how photographers have responded to man’s impact on the land, they began to photograph urban landscapes with human activity, rather than just natural landscapes.

This new style suggested a ‘cool detachment’ from the more perfect and pristine landscapes of the natural/ man-made world. The New Topographic showed new scenes of everyday American Landscape.

Here I’m using one of my landscape images from France, where there aren’t any people in the image. I decided to try and add some people to my image by selecting the place I wanted them in and simply asking it to put people in that space. I would say it can be difficult to add things with AI as sometimes they do what you want, I did have to ask AI different suggestions to get the best people. Sometimes the people would look at big weird and you could tell that they are aren’t real but it still adds some details to my image and with a quick glance you cant really tell that the people are fake. One negative thing about AI is they don’t always produce what your looking for, Although they do give you 3 options from you suggestion but sometimes it doesn’t do exactly what I need it to do. Making my image black and white helped to hide any odd colours added.

Here I’ve experimented on photoshop to show that AI can generate many different things. For example for one idea I can ask Ai to generate a city from 1950 and then ask if Ai can generate a city from the 2000’s to see the differences in times and how AI perspective is based on different time periods, I also used black and white photos to really show the differences between the time periods as different cameras were invented and had different affects to the photograph.

Playing around with AI helped me understand how it worked and what to do if something went wrong, this was purely just an experiment. Although AI can help add some extra details it doesn’t always have an accurate effect and can make the image look very weird. For example, on the image on the left, I tried adding pigeons, however, that didn’t go too well as most of the pigeons are just random shapes added to the bottom of my photo. I also tried adding lights to my image and it added a big space ship, which is not what I asked. Although AI is very helpful at adding and removing things it can just make the image look worse. Depending on how specific you are and what you are asking for. Even though this was just an experiment its good to know what AI can help me with.