Robert Adams: Questions for an Overcast Day [Paperback]

Robert Adams (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2008

Questions for an Overcast Day is a series of 33 photographs of young alder trees growing along the Oregon coastline near the artist's home. The series begins by focusing on the branches of the trees, and, progressing from one image to the next, narrows its focus, culminating with several images of a single leaf.
The leaves on the trees appear perforated, the precise cause of which is unknown. The artist likens the particular pattern of erosion on each leaf to hieroglyphics, reading in them a unique "calligraphy of disaster." About them, Adams writes:
What would account for the condition of the leaves--
drought, insects, rocky ground, disease, herbicide, wind?
Are the leaves beautiful?
As with the artist's earlier photographs--of suburban detritus, tract housing under construction and devastated, clear-cut forests--the viewer is invited to find beauty as it coexists with the imperfection, even destruction, of the present day.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Adams, born in California in 1937, has worked as a photographer of the changing American landscape over the past four decades. He has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation fellowships. His many books include What We Bought, Summer Nights, Los Angeles Spring and To Make it Home, as well as his Aperture titles Beauty in Photography, Why People Photograph and Along Some Rivers. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 74 pages
• Publisher: Matthew Marks Gallery/Fraenkel Gallery (February 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880146460
• ISBN-13: 978-1880146460
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,210,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Adams, born in 1937, came to prominence as part of the photographic movement known as New Topographics. His work has been widely exhibited both in Europe and the United States. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Spectrum International Prize for Photography, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars 60 b/w leaves by Robert Adams, July 28, 2008

By 

lehel jeno "lyency" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Robert Adams: Questions for an Overcast Day (Paperback)

If you have never heard about Robert Adams, then the Questions for an overcast day" is not the best introduction to his exceptional landscape photography. No question, this little book containing about 60 b/w images of leaves would represent the 70 years old artist's posture as of 2007, his minimalist(?) style and his modest personality.

Nevertheless, you would certainly like Robert Adams even more when looking at his basic landscape work he persecuted as one of the New Topographers, an informal (quasi)group of American photographers in the seventies. You would also appreciate the line of thoughts of an artist developing since 40 years ago and relentlessly progressing through dozens of high quality publications of b/w landscapes.

What is Robert Adams' attitude as an artist, in one sentence? Nature is beautiful as it is, there is no need to make it look nicer; and images do not need words, use as few words in photography books as possible. Accordingly, in this book there are no captions. At the end, just two lines are describing the origin of the collection of the images, all black and white close-ups and are exhibiting many similar forms of dying leaves still hanging on the trees in the autumn wind:

"The leaves are those of young alders on the side of Neahkahnie Mountain above Oregon coast. It was October and the leaves were dry green."