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September 13, 2008
Adams work in The New West (1974) and Denver (1977), arose from the results of a project he had completed on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 – 74 He continued to teach a full schedule of classes, but committing what spare hours
The work he produced of tract homes, shopping strips, and the concrete-block churches in the outer suburban American landscape is notable for its determination to avoid any type of pictorial effect in favor of a direct, matter-of-fact descriptiveness that just avoided triviality. Rather than failing through cleverness or excess or by straining for beauty, these photographs risked that possibility by appearing to be little more than the documentary snapshots
Robert Adams' Untitled, from What We Bought: The New World (Scenes From the Denver Metropolitan Area),
In his 1970-74 series, What We Bought: The New World (Scenes From the Denver Metropolitan Area), Adams photographed vast factory floors filled with anonymous workers, retail mall architecture that dominated suburban vistas, dozens of different brands of bread crammed on unending supermarket shelves. The series offered a stark and yet non-judgemental view of Americas growing love of mass consumption.
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Black and white photography is hard. Pictures I think will look awesome in black and white are a muddled grey mess, and those I think will look terrible come out with nice strong contrasts.