E. Sandeen
Jun 3, 2009
Citations
0
Influential Citations
4
Citations
Journal
Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum
Abstract
Robert Adams is one of the most important photographers of the post–World War II West. His images of the developing metropolitan sprawl along the Front Range define suburbanization in Colorado during the late 1960s and 1970s. His concerned focus on the logged-over areas in the mountains and the bulldozed fields and ponds on the plains present the sacrifices made to the burgeoning consumer culture of tract homes, housing developments, and shopping malls surrounding Denver and Colorado Springs. Starting with the 1974 publication of The New West and the New Topographics exhibit in 1975, Adams has built an international reputation, augmented by his eloquent writings on the aesthetics of photography and the practice of picture taking. During his first decade as a photographer, 1965–1975, Adams took pictures in the suburbs at the same time as he amassed the images for his first two books, both of which were historically based studies of rural structures, landscapes, and ways of life. White Churches of the Plains and The Architecture and Art of Early Hispanic Colorado are often presented as journeyman work influenced by Myron Wood, a prolific photographer of the American West who lived in Colorado Springs eric sandeen