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 his late, great 1999-2003 series “Turning Back,” which examines clear-cutting in the Pacific Northwest. On this week’s show, Adams says that the genesis of the series came 20 years before he started it, when he made a series of pictures — including this one — near Arch Cape, Oregon. This picture is in the collection of both MoMA and LACMA. Via this satellite photo, you can still see the astonishing impact of clear-cutting on the area.

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. 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.

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Image: Robert Adams, Clearcut and Burned, East of Arch Cape, Oregon, 1976. Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.