Eden, Colorado 1968 - 1969

Robert Adams made this photograph, “Eden, Colorado,” sometime in the 20th century using gelatin silver print. It’s a landscape, or maybe an anti-landscape. I can imagine Adams setting up his camera, seeking the right angle on what? An overpass, some scrubby brush, distant mountains? What’s so striking is how ordinary the scene is, yet he’s coaxing out something beautiful, or at least worth looking at, from the everyday. The composition is all about horizontals and verticals, a kind of man-made grid imposed on the natural world. The contrast between the solid concrete and the fragile vegetation makes me think about human impact on the environment, how we try to control and contain nature. It reminds me a bit of the New Topographics movement. Artists were thinking about how we shape the land and what that says about us. I guess artists are always in conversation, responding to each other, trying to make sense of the world through their own lens.