Beverley Thomas’s Critical Research Journal for Falmouth University MA Photography
This blog is being made as part of an accredited educational programme.
(Week 9) 07/08/2019
“Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us confront our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning.” – from Beauty in Photography – Robert Adams
Robert Adams
Robert Adams unique eye catches my gaze, especially his series Summer Nights, Walking. Photographic images that are concerned with life become resident of something more. With the ability to locate the meaning in life, he shares that discovery with us the viewer in his beautiful book. Summer Nights, Walking focuses on the expanding suburbs in Colorado in a classical collection of nocturnal landscapes. In his images we see unity and form, which in turn applies a coherency in life and the silence of the natural world. Adams has exemporary passion about what he believes in. Concerned with the impact of man on the landscape particularly commercialisation, he was an environmentalist long before it became a fashion. He is more interested with everyday miracles with nature, lean elegant and transcendently beautiful. Interestingly he often shoots his landscapes in portrait and shoots directly into light, deliberately capturing flare the metaphorical thumb prints of a better future. The light shines without judgment on the world, it is illuminated by moonlight and streetlamps. He shows us life is precious and fragile, while adapting to his intention, of a dreamy fluidity.
Adams spends as much time editing his books as he does taking them. Each page taps fiercely into our memories and feelings, he does this with a recognisable touch, whilst captivating us with a visual tour around his place he calls home. He captures the dark of night and I am taken by the shadows and beauty that become one with the stillness. At the core of it all I can see the joy and the fear that exist in the shadows and the light.
I refer back to another book by Adams “Beauty in Photography” Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. “The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope.” I can emphasie with these words and hope to somehow achieve in my own work.
Reference :
Aperture. Photographs by Robert Adams. available at https://aperture.org/shop/robert-adams-summer-nights-walking-book/ [accessed 07/08/19]
Adams, Robert. Summer Nights, Walking. (2009). Aperture:New York
Adams, Robert. Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. (2004). Aperture: New York.
The ASX. Summer Nights Walking Robert Adams available at https://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/04/robert-adams-summer-nights-walking-2009.html [accessed 07/08/19]
The PhotoBook Cafe. available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lJN0yQuK94 [accessed 07/08/19]
Beverley Thomas 
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