Weld County, Colorado c. 1984

"Weld County, Colorado" is a photograph by Robert Adams. It's a landscape, rendered in tones of brown and gray. What hits me first is the texture, or lack of it. There's a flatness, a dryness. The land seems to stretch out forever, meeting a washed-out sky. See how the tire tracks cut across the field? They're almost like brushstrokes, incising the surface. They pull your eye into the distance, but there's not much to see when you get there. Then there's that lone tree, clinging to the earth. It's a single, solid mass of tangled branches, a stoic symbol in this vast landscape. I'm reminded of the work of the Bechers. There's a similar detached, documentary approach, but Adams's work has a quiet melancholy, a sense of loss, that sets it apart. It's a picture that lingers, a meditation on the passage of time and the changing face of the American West.