Denver, Colorado 1981

This photograph, "Denver, Colorado," by Robert Adams captures two figures with ice cream, caught in a seemingly ordinary moment. I imagine Adams, with his camera, drawn to the way these figures intersect with the stark, almost indifferent landscape. What was he thinking, framing the mundane and the monumental? The sepia tones give everything a washed-out look, like memory itself. The electric wires cut across the sky like musical notations. A road, a sign. There is a poignancy in his vision. It reminds me of other artists' quiet observations, like the way the Bechers documented industrial structures, transforming the banal into something iconic. Artists like Adams, and the Bechers, they are all in dialogue with one another. I think Adams encourages us to find beauty, or at least significance, in what we often overlook. And maybe that’s what art is all about—reinterpreting what we thought we knew.