Next to Interstate 10, Redlands, California Possibly 1983 - 1990

Robert Adams made this gelatin silver print, ‘Next to Interstate 10, Redlands, California’, sometime in the 1970s. Adams’ work invites a dialogue between the myth of the American West and the environmental impact of human activity. Here we see a cluster of trees, their heavy boughs bowed as if weighed down by some unseen pressure. The trees appear to be huddled together for protection, existing on a slope alongside a major highway in Southern California. Adams focuses his lens on the margins of urban development. His images are not overtly political, but they carry a quiet, melancholic weight, reminding us of the uneasy relationship between progress and preservation, between the individual and the environment. The photograph serves as a reflection on what we gain and what we lose in the name of progress.