Ordinary Pictures

Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis (mine, not Robert Adams’ :))

Of the living photographers I admire, Robert Adams is near the top (it isn’t a race, so “near the top” is as close as anyone gets to the top).

I found this great interview on the Art21 site. An excerpt:

The nature of photography is to engage life. It’s made of life. Life is complex, and I often think photography is similarly complicated. At least it seems so to me. The early twentieth-century photographer Lewis Hine, who photographed child labor problems, said at one point that what he wanted to do was to show what was good so that we would value it, and what was bad so that we would want to change it. And in somewhat the same way that’s what I’ve always hoped to do. I’d like to document what’s glorious in the West and remains glorious, despite what we’ve done to it. I’d like to be very truthful about that. But I also want to show what is disturbing and what needs correction. The best way to do that—and it’s the way every artist dreams of—is to show it at the same time in the very same rectangle.

Its a good interview and worth your time to read. Also, if you haven’t read his two little books, Beauty in Photography and Why People Photograph, read them. You won’t regret it.