Coos County, Oregon 1999

Curator: This gelatin-silver print, titled "Coos County, Oregon," was created by Robert Adams in 1999. What’s your immediate reaction to this monochrome landscape? Editor: Stark. The composition seems dominated by a vast, empty sky above the brutal textures of what I assume is a deforested landscape. Curator: That negative space is very calculated. Adams spent much of his career documenting the impact of development on the American West. He's interested in those fraught intersections between nature and capital. This image encapsulates those ideas, as the visual evidence of extractive practices meets our expectations of what a landscape photo can, or should, communicate about our natural environment. Editor: The image is organized through contrast: between light and shadow, smoothness and roughness, absence and presence. Look at how the skeletal remains of trees reach upward only to meet this absolutely indifferent sky. Curator: Exactly. There is that dialogue, isn’t there? I think it goes further; it seems as if the remnants on the ground become a symbol of broken treaties, disrupted communities, and the silencing of Indigenous voices whose very lives are tied to the well-being of these forests. Adams seems to draw on the formal traditions of landscape photography to subtly confront themes of social justice and environmental degradation. Editor: Perhaps. But even divorced from its political context, I appreciate the tonal range Adams achieves with the gelatin-silver print. The variations between deep blacks and hazy grays give texture and depth, almost sculptural in a way. I wouldn't say he is indifferent; he creates depth from the wreckage. Curator: I see your point. Adams seems aware of the aesthetics and historical tropes inherent in the form of landscape photography and is keen to expand them. In this picture, you see something of the older traditions, but he manages to imbue the photograph with layers of meaning through that tension. Editor: Agreed. Even in its devastation, the stark formal qualities of the photograph offer something akin to beauty, which then deepens our experience when you confront the historical circumstances and the injustices present here.