Colorado c. 1973

This photograph, called "Colorado," was captured by Robert Adams using photographic materials and processes sometime after 1937. There is a subtle kind of beauty here that is almost conceptual - Adams isn't really trying to capture a beautiful scene. He's after something else. Look how the telephone cord snakes across the counter, mirroring the electrical wires going into the outlet behind the coffee pot. These mundane details accumulate, composing a quiet narrative about everyday life. The light is soft, gray, almost like it's been filtered through a screen, and the surfaces gleam without any glamour. In Adams’ work, there's always a dialogue between the man-made and the natural, a tension between order and chaos. Think about Bernd and Hilla Becher who photographed industrial structures with similar deadpan precision. But Adams is also inviting us to consider the poetry in the ordinary, the stories embedded in the spaces we inhabit. There is a deep sense of the uncanny in it's apparent familiarity.