Robert Adams: Why People Photograph

A now classic text on the art, Why People Photograph gathers a selection of essays by the great master photographer Robert Adams, tackling such diverse subjects as collectors, humor, teaching, money and dogs. Adams also writes brilliantly on Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, Judith Joy Ross, Susan Meiselas, Michael Schmidt, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Eugène Atget. The book closes with two essays on "working conditions" in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American West, and the essay "Two Landscapes." Adams writes: At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are.

Format: Paperback / softback
Number of pages: 189
Publication date: 2005-06-15
Measurements: 5.53 x 8.28 x 0.64 inches
ISBN: 9780893816032

Photographs by Robert Adams. Authored by Robert Adams.

Robert Adams is a major figure in New Topographics movement known for his photographs of the modern American West. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Spectrum International Prize for Photography, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, his many books include: From the Missouri West (1980), Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values (1981), Our Lives and Our Children (1983), Summer Nights, Walking (1985), Los Angeles Spring (1986), and Perfect Times, Perfect Places (1988). Adams’s work has been widely exhibited, including in a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.