Poplars, Harney County, Oregon Possibly 1999 - 2005

Robert Adams made this photograph, "Poplars, Harney County, Oregon," and it’s an exercise in seeing how much detail can be packed into a monochromatic image. I’m drawn to the starkness of this photograph, how the leaves and branches are rendered with such clarity that they almost become abstract shapes. The texture of the bark, the delicate tracery of the branches against the sky, it's all so carefully observed. There’s a density to the composition, with the interwoven branches creating a kind of screen that obscures and reveals at the same time. My eye keeps going back to the way the light catches the leaves, each one a tiny highlight in a sea of gray. It makes me think of Bernd and Hilla Becher, and their photographs of industrial structures. Like the Bechers, Adams is interested in documenting the world around him, but he also brings a real sense of poetry to his work. It’s a reminder that art is not just about what we see, but how we see it.