Robert Adams

Robert Adams, who was originally from New Jersey, did not have a healthy childhood. He had chronic bronchial problems along with fairly severe asthma, and contracted polio at the age of 12. He was able to recover from the polio but in order to alleviate his breathing problems, his family moved to a suburb outside of Denver, Colorado when he was 15.

Adams went to college at UC Boulder as well as the University of Redlands in California before earning his graduate degree and becoming an English Professor at Colorado College. A couple of years after he began teaching, he bought a 35mm camera. He became fascinated with landscape and architecture, and after reading a few books on photography and taking some lessons from Myron Wood, cut back to half time teaching to make more time for his growing hobby.

Adams became an artist focused on change. He was fascinated with the constant ambiguity of the American West, and so focused his work on recording it. Now a very well-known photographer, his fame originated with his collection entitled Photographs of a Man Altered Landscape. 

His photographs mainly focused on the twisted Manifest Destiny philosophy that still seems to be alive in the 21^st century; the idea that the West represents unlimited natural resources just waiting to be taken advantage of. Adams pictures were often devoid of people, but instead just captured their footprints. Whether it was a pile of garbage on the side of the road or a half built house, Adams sought to record the ever changing landscape due to human hands.

I personally believe that to fight the constant change of the landscape due to the human condition is a hopeless task. The bottom line is that our world will forever change and go through cycles. Yes, we can do our best to minimize the negative impact that this will have on our future environment, but to try to eliminate it completely isn’t something that we can do as a species. However, Adams work records a valuable chapter in our nation’s chapter, and hopefully we can learn a little bit about our future from the past that he captured for us.