Eden, Colorado 1968 - 1969

This black and white photograph of Eden, Colorado, was taken by Robert Adams. I’m really drawn to the way Adams frames this scene. It’s pretty minimal, right? A truck, some telephone poles, a vast expanse of land. I bet he was thinking about this idea of the American West, and how it’s often romanticized, but the reality is a little more complicated, a little more bleak. He wants us to see the beauty in the ordinary, even in the mundane. I can imagine him setting up his camera, carefully composing the shot, waiting for the light to be just right. The emptiness around the truck almost feels like a stage. Like something could happen there. Adams invites you to consider what that might be. He's in conversation with other photographers who've looked at the West, people like Timothy O’Sullivan and Carleton Watkins. Only here, the scene has an industrial scale. It is quite different from Eden, really.