< Return to Video

Robert Adams in "Ecology" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

  • 0:14 - 0:18
    ROBERT ADAMS: The final strength 
    in really great photographs
  • 0:18 - 0:22
    is that they suggest more than 
    just what they show literally.
  • 0:25 - 0:30
    Photography and poetry both center on metaphor.
  • 0:32 - 0:37
    My subject has fundamentally for 
    forty years been the American West.
  • 0:38 - 0:46
    The first serious photography I did that 
    had any success to it began in Colorado.
  • 0:53 - 0:56
    Living in Colorado Springs at the time I started
  • 0:56 - 1:00
    to photograph along the emerging suburban strip.
  • 1:03 - 1:07
    I was taking pictures of the 
    tract houses and highways.
  • 1:10 - 1:15
    I came into the dark room and printed 
    them and I was really surprised.
  • 1:16 - 1:18
    I thought I was taking pictures 
    of things that I hated,
  • 1:21 - 1:24
    but there was something about these pictures,
  • 1:25 - 1:30
    they were unexpectedly, disconcertingly glorious
  • 1:31 - 1:35
    and from that grew a project called The New West
  • 1:35 - 1:38
    which really was the first serious work I did.
  • 1:46 - 1:50
    I’d like to document what’s glorious in the west,
  • 1:50 - 1:54
    and remains glorious, even 
    despite what we’ve done to it.
  • 1:54 - 2:00
    I’d like to...to be very truthful about 
    that but I also want to show what is…
  • 2:00 - 2:04
    what is disturbing and what needs correction.
  • 2:05 - 2:09
    The best way to do that, and it’s 
    the way every artist dreams of,
  • 2:09 - 2:13
    is to show it at the same time 
    in the very same rectangle.
  • 2:15 - 2:22
    The effort is to find that perfectly 
    balanced frame where everything fits.
  • 2:23 - 2:27
    It’s not exactly the same as life, it’s…
  • 2:27 - 2:30
    it’s life seen better.
  • 2:31 - 2:33
    Here’s a picture of mine that I’m happy with.
  • 2:33 - 2:37
    The bottom of the picture is 
    a kind of bowl of dark trees.
  • 2:37 - 2:44
    In this bowl is the city of Boulder and 
    beyond it is a few of the plains and to me,
  • 2:44 - 2:47
    that’s a successful picture because
  • 2:47 - 2:52
    it does suggest some of the contradictory 
    nature of the western experience.
  • 2:52 - 2:57
    Similarly, I took a picture once of a 
    woman silhouetted in a tract house window,
  • 2:57 - 3:01
    and in one sense that’s a picture 
    of the saddest kind of isolation
  • 3:01 - 3:03
    and most inhumane building.
  • 3:04 - 3:09
    But also raining down over this 
    picture onto the roof and the lawn,
  • 3:09 - 3:12
    is glorious, high altitude light.
  • 3:13 - 3:16
    There’s no light like Colorado and 
    you can see it in this picture.
  • 3:16 - 3:19
    It’s just absolutely sublime light.
  • 3:22 - 3:25
    Your decision to make a 
    photograph is a kind of seduction
  • 3:26 - 3:29
    and the seduction is worked by light.
  • 3:30 - 3:34
    Many, many times, thousands of exposures,
  • 3:34 - 3:36
    were made in a state of helplessness.
  • 3:36 - 3:39
    I simply had to do that.
  • 3:39 - 3:43
    There was nothing could keep 
    me from pressing the trigger.
  • 3:49 - 3:53
    Most of my pictures at the ocean 
    were taken from the south jetty
  • 3:53 - 3:56
    on the Oregon side of the 
    mouth of the Columbia River.
  • 3:58 - 4:04
    In five or ten minutes the whole 
    surface of the sea will change.
  • 4:08 - 4:12
    To retake a landscape 
    picture is almost impossible.
  • 4:13 - 4:16
    But it’s even more so for seascapes.
  • 4:17 - 4:19
    It was a wonderful experience.
  • 4:19 - 4:22
    It was just surrendering yourself to something.
  • 4:25 - 4:27
    Every photographer wants to do books.
  • 4:28 - 4:33
    For obvious reasons, they reach a 
    wider audience than exhibitions do
  • 4:33 - 4:38
    and they allow the audience to consider 
    the work over a longer period of time.
  • 4:40 - 4:45
    Putting pictures next to each other inevitably 
    influences the nature of both pictures.
  • 4:48 - 4:51
    We work hundreds upon hundreds of hours.
  • 4:51 - 4:54
    A major book will require that in terms of editing
  • 4:55 - 5:00
    and that’s what Charsten, my 
    wife, has helped me with, t
  • 5:01 - 5:06
    hat together with being my text 
    editor for my entire working life
  • 5:06 - 5:07
    and our married life together.
  • 5:08 - 5:13
    She’s the person whom I have absolute trust in.
  • 5:14 - 5:17
    Almost every book begins with a gift.
  • 5:17 - 5:19
    A picture you didn’t expect.
  • 5:20 - 5:22
    There are a lot of surprises in photography
  • 5:22 - 5:26
    and if you’re not interested in surprises 
    you shouldn’t be a photographer.
  • 5:26 - 5:29
    It’s one of the great, 
    enlivening blessings of the…
  • 5:29 - 5:30
    of the medium.
  • 5:31 - 5:35
    At your best, it teaches you 
    to try to remain open to new…
  • 5:35 - 5:39
    new experience because the gifts 
    are sometimes really exciting.
  • 5:41 - 5:45
    I took pictures in southern California 
    over a period of three years.
  • 5:47 - 5:50
    The strange thing is that 
    although southern California
  • 5:50 - 5:53
    of course stands under this pall of smog,
  • 5:53 - 5:58
    nonetheless the light that filters down 
    through that smog is extraordinary.
  • 6:04 - 6:09
    It’s an amazingly verdant if 
    somewhat ominous landscape.
  • 6:11 - 6:13
    Very beautiful country, still.
  • 6:16 - 6:21
    After I spent some time working in the…
  • 6:21 - 6:26
    in California I then began 
    to turn to the northwest.
  • 6:32 - 6:37
    The book Turning Back is 
    fundamentally about deforestation.
  • 6:39 - 6:42
    It’s not just a matter of exhaustion of resources.
  • 6:42 - 6:47
    I do think there is involved 
    an exhaustion of spirit.
  • 6:54 - 6:57
    Look at that...all those little industrial trees.
  • 6:57 - 7:02
    Not a single tree in sight that’s 
    over thirty-five, forty years old.
  • 7:10 - 7:14
    I think the reason I care about that awful place
  • 7:14 - 7:17
    was not only that it sat within 
    about six feet of the road,
  • 7:17 - 7:20
    they had the temerity to cut this tree,
  • 7:21 - 7:24
    but this contemptuous beer can.
  • 7:24 - 7:30
    Boy does that capture what this 
    landscape does to the spirit.
  • 7:30 - 7:34
    It brings out everything 
    desperately close to nihilism
  • 7:34 - 7:36
    in everybody who passes by.
  • 7:36 - 7:38
    It’s a breeding ground for contempt.
  • 7:41 - 7:43
    Some of the earliest memories 
    I have with my father
  • 7:43 - 7:47
    are in teaching me how to 
    saw wood and hammer nails,
  • 7:48 - 7:52
    and if you learn it early it 
    becomes mysteriously central
  • 7:52 - 7:54
    and helpful to your health of spirit.
  • 7:57 - 8:02
    It’s a mainly just a wonderful way to 
    relate to the world in another way,
  • 8:02 - 8:04
    it’s like you might use music.
  • 8:08 - 8:09
    Now you can remember things in your hands
  • 8:09 - 8:11
    and you can know things with your hands
  • 8:11 - 8:13
    that you can’t know with your head.
  • 8:17 - 8:21
    Edward Thomas observed that 
    people and trees are quote,
  • 8:21 - 8:24
    imperfect friends, unquote,
  • 8:24 - 8:28
    citing the tragic nature of 
    people and the silence of trees.
  • 8:29 - 8:32
    There are however, times of harmony.
  • 8:32 - 8:34
    With Lombardi poplars, for instance,
  • 8:34 - 8:38
    whose thirst and fragility 
    might tempt us to cut them down,
  • 8:38 - 8:41
    but whose beauty gives us pause.
  • 8:41 - 8:46
    They seem to say with us what we 
    can not say perfectly by ourselves.
  • 8:46 - 8:50
    I will praise thee, oh Lord, with my whole heart.
  • 8:51 - 8:57
    This is a wonderful poplar that Charsten 
    and I found on the high desert of Oregon,
  • 8:57 - 9:03
    and we spent about eight hours over 
    two days photographing this tree
  • 9:03 - 9:05
    in different lights at different hours.
  • 9:09 - 9:13
    I have yet to know anybody who does 
    not have some response to poplars.
  • 9:15 - 9:20
    There’s a voice. And uh, 
    thank goodness it’s there.
  • 9:22 - 9:27
    You know if you haven’t loved 
    a tree enough to if not hug it
  • 9:27 - 9:31
    at least want to walk up to it and touch it,
  • 9:32 - 9:35
    as if you’re touching a profound mystery,
  • 9:35 - 9:38
    if that experience has eluded you,
  • 9:38 - 9:40
    I feel bad for you.
  • 9:44 - 9:45
    This was such a dramatic place.
  • 9:45 - 9:48
    I think both you and I knew that…
  • 9:48 - 9:52
    that something had to come out of 
    this kind of valley of death here,
  • 9:53 - 9:55
    and then we found these enormous stumps.
  • 9:55 - 9:58
    And you went and sat down, and 
    I thought, god there it is.
  • 9:58 - 10:03
    There’s the...the posture that conveys 
    the utter sorrow one feels here.
  • 10:15 - 10:16
    ADAMS: What a place.
  • 10:18 - 10:21
    CHARSTEN: Well, what strikes me is the 
    fact that it’s a black and white landscape.
  • 10:22 - 10:25
    With a tiny fringe of green sometimes.
  • 10:26 - 10:28
    And that’s how I think of that place.
  • 10:28 - 10:32
    ADAMS: I was just going to say, 
    that’s...that’s almost what it was.
  • 10:33 - 10:36
    ADAMS: I remember there didn’t 
    seem to be anything possible to say
  • 10:36 - 10:40
    and then we read some lines by W.S. Merwin.
  • 10:40 - 10:43
    “After an age of leaves and feathers,
  • 10:43 - 10:47
    someone dead thought of this mountain as money,
  • 10:47 - 10:51
    and cut the trees that were here 
    in the wind and the rain at night,
  • 10:52 - 10:54
    it is hard to say it.”
  • 10:57 - 11:01
    Beauty, which I admit to being in pursuit of,
  • 11:01 - 11:05
    is an extremely suspect word 
    among many in the art world.
  • 11:05 - 11:08
    But I don’t think you can get along without it.
  • 11:08 - 11:12
    It’s the confirmation frankly 
    of...of meaning in life.
Title:
Robert Adams in "Ecology" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" broadcast series
Duration:
12:24

English (United States) subtitles

Revisions