Untitled 1973 - 1974

Robert Adams made this photograph sometime in the 20th or 21st century. It’s a small black and white image of a windswept plain. Down in the lower foreground, we see a yucca plant growing out of the ground, but poking out of it, like some weird bloom, is a white plastic bag. The bag is torn open; you can see into its depths. I feel for this artist, I really do. You’re out in nature, looking for beauty, and all you find is garbage, despoiling the earth. What Adams has done is resist the urge to crop it out, or edit it away in the darkroom. Instead, he’s included it, asking us to really look and reckon with what we see. He wants us to consider the whole picture; not just the pretty parts. It’s like he’s saying, this is the world, and we’re living in it.