Colorado Springs, Colorado Possibly 1969 - 1990

This photograph, taken by Robert Adams somewhere in Colorado Springs, captures a scene of excavation, a human-made hole in the ground. I keep looking at the solitary figure digging away in the earth. I imagine that for Adams, framing the shot, it might have been like making a mark, the edge of the picture plane a horizon line. He finds the tension in the scene by placing the worker just left of center. The ladder leans against the edge, like a badly drawn line. The mountain range sits far in the background, like a stage set. What kind of record is he trying to keep here? Whose land is being dug up? I wonder if he was thinking about other photographers, like Timothy O’Sullivan or Carleton Watkins, who framed the western landscape, the new frontier, as one of both beauty and impending doom? Photography, like painting, is a conversation across time, and this photograph participates in that back-and-forth.