Neahkahnie Mountain, Oregon 2004

Robert Adams made this photograph, Neahkahnie Mountain, Oregon, at an unknown date. Adams’ palette is restricted to black and white, but this reduction lends the piece a ghostly, ethereal quality. It's a picture about seeing; it’s a picture about the process of looking. What grabs me is how the crispness of the leaves, eaten away by insects, contrasts with the soft-focus shadow. The leaves in the foreground aren't concealing anything; they are right there, ragged and holey. Then this shadow enters the frame, slightly out of focus. The crispness of the leaves morphs into a vaguer, more dreamlike version of the real thing. Painters like Gerhard Richter used photography to explore realism versus abstraction. Adams seems to be asking similar questions, not with paint but with light, shadow, and the lens of a camera. It reminds us that art can be found in the everyday, if you only look closely enough.