The New West

Robert Adams
The New West

Photographs: Robert Adams

Text: Robert Adams, John Szarkowski, Heinz Liesbrock & Thomas Weski

Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

136 pages

Year: 2000

Comments: Hardcover with jacket, 23,5 x 25,7 cm. Text in English. In very good condition other than little soiling and a bump on the back cover (see picture). Text in English.

Originally published in 1974, Robert Adams' "The New West" signaled a paradigm shift in the photographic representation of American landscapes. Foregoing photography's traditional role of romanticizing the Western landscape, Adams focused instead on the construction of tract and mobile homes, subdivisions, shopping centers and urban sprawl in the suburbs of Colorado Springs and the Denver area. Adams transmuted these zones with his minimalist vision of their austerity; as he has noted, "no place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." Objective and direct, Adams' photographs, rendered in his signature middle-gray scale, unsentimentally depict a despoiled landscape washed in the intense Colorado sunlight. Today "The New West" stands alongside Walker Evans' "American Photographs," Robert Frank's "The Americans" and Stephen Shore's "Uncommon Places" in the pantheon of landmark projects on American culture and society. Foreword by John Szarkowski.