Shoot in the style of Robert J. Adams
I have chosen to shoot in the style of Robert J. Adams because of his singular dedication to documenting the changes wrought to the Western US by what he refers to as “out-of-control Corporatism.”
Robert J. Adams was born May 8, 1937 in Orange, New Jersey and, by age 15, had moved to Colorado. He has spent his career exploring the region of the Western US subtended by the triangle that goes from Colorado to Oregon to California. He has sometimes referred to this as the New West. Among his notable works are, White Churches of the Plains (1970); The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range (1974); Our Lives and Our Children: Photographs Taken Near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant (1984); What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area, 1970–1974 (1994), and the collection of essays, Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews by Robert Adams (1994, updated 2004).
Active since the late 60’s, Adams was initially influenced by the work of Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, particularly through the impact of their jointly authored book published by the Sierra Club in 1960 titled, This is the American Earth, considered to be instrumental in launching the modern environmental movement. Other photographers he later embraced include Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Douglas Duncan and Myron Wood. Adams is a subtle and complicated man, though, and he was also influenced by such artists as Edward Hopper and Rembrandt (particularly in their use of light), the films of Ingmar Bergman, and such authors as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Also identified by him as a strong and enduring influence was poetry, particularly the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Carl Sandburg. Equally important at this time, both for the emergence of modern environmentalism and for its direct influence on Adams, is the scientific essay by Rachel Carson titled, Silent Spring, published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin (Boston).
The images below illustrate the style revealed in, The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range (1974). He has said of his style at this time that his focus was on the ravages that derive from our consumer lifestyles combined with a persistent attempt to point beyond the ravages of the natural world to the underlying beauty that will leave his audience hopeful, expectant. This, as we shall see, is a delicate and difficult balance to achieve.
There’s nothing pretty about this shot: it is meant to underscore the relentless progression of urban blight, out to the horizons, as far as the eye can see, with no regard to integrating these new neighborhoods into their natural environment in sustainable ways, Also, we see the implicit demands of a consumer culture: they are all built to the same cookie-cutter standards, each one like the others in both construction and design, and with no intention of constructing homes that will last; they are deliberately built to be disposable. Paraphrasing Adams, “It is unlikely that any of these will still be standing in fifty years.” Note, too, the brightness of the sky in contrast to the bleakness of the landscape. Therein lies the `pointing to hope, to something beyond this.’
And here is a picture that illustrates what we lose and the price to be paid: the wholesale destruction of pristine wilderness areas to clear land for urban development. Again, enough of the sky is presented to give a contrast to the bleakness of the ruined landscape: rich hues in both cloud and sky to suggest that “somewhere … over there … things are still as they should be.”
This one is brilliant! Here is a picture that portrays the dignity of the lives as lived in these communities. On one level it’s banal. The apparently abandoned child in diapers, toy lying neglected in the driveway, with half the shot capturing what looks like a bleak landscape as though by accident. Look deeper though, at his use of lighting: the bleak landscape and ominous clouds are left dark and foreboding, portending something ominous, while the child in white diapers and t-shirt and the house are brightly illuminated, with the child emerging from the darkness of the carport to look out into the world with a slightly expectant, exploratory expression. It speaks to the resilience and enduring quality of these people. Despite the bleakness of their surroundings, life goes on.
For my own exploration of these themes, I chose as my destination the Strandherd/South Barrhaven area. As recently as 2005, this area was mostly pristine wilderness that has since been replaced by a blight of cookie-cutter housing, from 4,500 sq ft McMansions in Stonebridge, to townhouse tracts and massive multi-unit apartment and condo complexes, laid together end-to-end block after block, together with the endless proliferation of plaza malls for shopping and services, and all of it accessible always and only by car.
Image 1
In Image 1 my intention was to convey the impression that the construction goes on continuously and all the units are stylistically similar with only minor variations of colour, exterior cladding, etc. So, we have the complete units on the far left with additional units at various stages of construction as we pan right. I deliberately left the foreground in to show both the area being prepped for more units and the grassland areas being overtaken as the urban expansion continues.
Image 2
Image 2 frames the distant high-rise units with the mature Maple tree in the foreground for another examination of what is being lost. As recently as 2005, this road did not exist – this was a largely undisturbed wilderness area that extended from Prince of Wales Drive to Stranherd.
Image 3
Image 3 is from two of the many plaza-style shopping centres that now run the entire length of Strandherd. Almost all of them have donation boxes like these for articles of clothing and (in some cases) smaller household items. The “Absolutely No Dumping” signs are always ignored and they seem to have become the centres of a kind of alternative economy, as seen in Image 3 (this woman went through systematically, loading up what she perceived to be useful and/or sellable). To me, the emergence of this underground economy, and the people that occupy this niche (like the woman seen here) speaks to their determination and resilience. Conspicuously, another sight along Strandherd that one sees about as frequently as these donation boxes are huge Dymon Storage facilities (and this despite the enormous size of many of these homes).
What I learned:
Returning once again to my reasons for choosing Adams, the project goes to the heart of my own life’s work. As a philosopher and academic for the past thirty years, I focused on issues related to globalization, unregulated Consumer Capitalism and the hope for achieving a genuinely sustainable future. My plans for a photographic essay that would document the effects of the commercialization of our lives and of the climate change that follows would, for me, be a powerful compliment to this work and the book I published this year with Routledge. There are some things images can accomplish that words cannot. Facts and arguments can always be denied; swept aside as just another interpretation. With a picture, it is made visceral.
Relevant Works:
Adams, Robert J. (1970) White Churches of the Plains. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press.
Adams, Robert J. (1974) The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press.
Adams, Robert J. (1994) Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews by Robert Adams. New York: Aperture.
Carson, Rachel (1962) Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Greenough, Sarah (2023) American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams. New York: Aperture.
Henry, Wayne I. (2024) A Philosopher’s Guide to Natural Capitalism: A Sustainable Future Within Reach. London: Routledge.
Sandburg, Carl (1994) Chicago Poems (unabridged). New York: Dover.
