Baker County, Oregon 2000

Robert Adams made this photograph, Baker County, Oregon, using light, time, and photographic paper. Adams' photographs have this way of being straightforward and mysterious at the same time. Look at how the tall trees at the roadside are almost stacked together like dark bars. It feels like they are holding up the sky and all its cloudy energy! I'm drawn to the textures and tones that sit somewhere between light and shadow, especially the long thin branch which reaches out from the darkness of the central tree. There’s a sense of melancholic beauty, capturing a specific moment, a certain kind of light. It's like you're driving past, but you’re also drawn to stop, to think, to see more. Like the photographs of Walker Evans, Adams' work has a stillness and a sense of openness which invites us to slow down and really look. Maybe photography is a kind of painting after all.