Near Lyons, Colorado 1977

Robert Adams captured this image near Lyons, Colorado, using photography, a medium that walks this interesting line between documentation and interpretation. What strikes me is the stark contrast, or maybe it's the lack thereof, between the natural landscape and the intrusions of human infrastructure. Those telephone poles cutting through the scene; they're almost like deliberate strokes, asserting a human presence onto a vast, indifferent terrain. The road, barely visible, snakes through the land, a subtle but ever-present reminder of our interventions. Adams's work reminds me a bit of the New Topographics movement – artists who unflinchingly documented the altered landscapes of the American West. But there's a quiet beauty here too, a meditation on the tension between progress and preservation, between what we build and what we leave behind. It's a reminder that art, even in its most documentary form, invites us to see the world anew, to question our place within it.