Clearcut, Coos County, Oregon 1999

Robert Adams made this photograph of a clearcut in Coos County, Oregon. It's a black and white image, a study in greys, from the nearly white sky to the dark stump dominating the foreground. Look how the scene's laid out. It’s bleak, raw, and somehow very deliberate. You can feel Adams responding to the landscape as he records it. What strikes me is the texture. The rough, splintered surfaces of the tree stumps, the chaotic scatter of branches across the ground. The tonal range is so narrow, it almost feels like a drawing. There’s a flatness, like lithography, that invites you to consider the composition as a constructed space. Look at the way the stump, that central form, rises like a monument, yet it's a monument to loss, to an absence. Adams reminds me a little of the Bechers, that German duo who photographed industrial structures. Both are interested in the impact of industry on the landscape, but Adams brings a distinctly American sensibility, a sense of melancholy and moral questioning. Ultimately, photography is an ongoing conversation, a way of seeing and thinking about the world, and inviting others to see and think along with you.