The Modern Art Notes Podcast

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features a rare interview with Robert Adams.

Among the topics Adams and I discuss is the quality of light in Colorado and how Adams has tried to capture it in his work. Pictured here is a detail from a picture Adams and I discussed at length, Methodist church, Bowen, Colorado (1965). The left side of the church almost seems to be a light-source, the right-hand of the church features an almost-delicate shadow.

Adams may be the greatest living American photographer. In the 1960s and 1970s he brought a new sensibility to photographing the most classic subject in American art, the land. By emphasizing man’s impact on Colorado and its suburbs in series such as “The New West” and “What We Bought,” Adams helped pioneer art that addressed our impact on the landscape and on the Earth. While Adams is best known for his work looking at America’s consumption of Western land, he has also photographed the land he loves in ways that remind us why he loves it.

A major retrospective of his 46-year career is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. Titled “The Place We Live,” it’s on view through October 28. Virtually the entire show, images of and from Adams’s books, and a detailed chronology are on YUAG’s superb exhibition website. The three-volume exhibition catalogue is particularly beautiful.

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