Eden, Colorado 1968 - 1969

Robert Adams made this gelatin silver print, Eden, Colorado, at an undetermined date. The black and white tones create a sense of starkness, and a kind of quiet. I’m drawn to the way the flatbed trailer cuts across the frame, a dark horizontal line against the pale landscape. There's a stillness to this image, a sense of waiting. It feels like something about to happen, or maybe everything already has. The truck feels heavy, grounded, but also ready to move, to transport. The telephone pole in the background echos the vertical supports on the truck, and adds to the feeling of an industrial landscape. It makes me think of Edward Hopper, the way he captures a sense of isolation and melancholic beauty in the everyday. Like Hopper, Adams finds poetry in the mundane, a quiet beauty in the overlooked corners of the world. What is it carrying, and where is it going? It’s a good question to sit with.