Denver, Colorado 1974

Robert Adams made this photograph in Denver, Colorado. The light is so flat, and the contrast so controlled, that the whole thing seems to hover in a zone between documentation and dream. I can imagine Adams, out there in the American West, thinking about Walker Evans, and the way Evans showed the world with such clarity and simplicity. There’s a similar feeling here, a kind of stripped-down beauty, that finds the sublime in the everyday. Look at how he frames the house, straight on, no frills, but with a sharp sense of geometry. The power lines cutting across the sky, the awkward fence, these are the marks of human intervention on the landscape. I like the way that Adams doesn’t shy away from this, but rather embraces it as part of the story. It reminds me of Ed Ruscha's photos of parking lots, but with more melancholy. It's as though Adams were saying, “This is what we’ve done to the world, but there’s still a kind of austere beauty to be found here.”