The latest photographs by Robert Adams, eighteen of them, are currently on display at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. We follow the american photographer along a road lined with pine trees and plants of all kinds. Specializing in travel and his country’s rural settings, Adams takes viewers on a trip to the seaside, although the destination is only revealed upon arrival.
This short excursion to Nehalem Bay State Park, in Oregon, begins in a car and ends on foot. Without abandoning his black-and-white style, for this project, Adams rediscovered his taste for medium format and the sense of detail which makes him unique, resulting in a set of gentle, low-contrast photographs. “The road is one that my family traveled often and fondly,” writes Adams. “Many of its members are gone now, and Kerstin and I visit the road for the example of the trees.” He had stored this work in an archival print box and wrote in pencil a line from the journal of the Greek poet George Seferis: “A marvelous road, enough to make you weep; pine trees, pine trees…”
In addition to this new series, in an adjacent room, the Fraenkel gallery is holding a retrospective of all of Robert Adams’ books. Sixty monographs are displayed under glass, including some first editions of The New West, Denver, Prairie, From the Missouri West, Summer Nights, Los Angeles Spring,West From the Columbia, What We Bought and The Place We Live. Alongside the objects is a selection of photographs revisiting the artist’s 45-year career. From his first book, White Churches of the Plain (1970), to his latest A Road Through Shore Pine (2014), Adams never seems—to his credit—to have changed his vision of the world, which remains sensitive regardless of the landscape, establishing the same neutrality in each photograph, advocating a photographic approach that is at once humanist and environmental.
EXHIBITION
Robert Adams : A road through shore pine & The complete books
September 11th – November 15th 2014
Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary St #450
San Francisco
CA 94108
United States
+1 (415) 981-2661
