Robert Adams Turning Back
Malheur National Forest, south of John Day, Grant County, Oregon, US, 1999.
Kerstin, next to an old-growth stump, Coos County, Oregon, US, 1999.
Near Halfway, Baker County, Oregon, US, 1999.
Near Clatskanie, Columbia County, Oregon, US, 1999.
On Humbug Mountain, Clatsop County, Oregon, United States, 1999.
Coos County, Oregon, United States, 1999.
Sitka Spruce, Cape Blanco State Park, Curry County, Oregon, United States, 1999.
On Humbug Mountain, Clatsop County, Oregon, United States, 1999.
Artist's Statement
Clear-cutting is a controversial forestry practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down. More than 90 per cent of the original forest in the American Northwest has been clear-cut at least once. The large stumps in these pictures are remnants of ancient woods where trees commonly grow to be five hundred or more years old.
The small stumps are what is left of a recently ‘harvested’ monoculture, an industrial forest sustained by artificial fertilisers and selective herbicides and cut in its infancy.
Will this practice eventually exhaust the soil and end in permanent deforestation? There are numerous areas in the world where this has happened, among them parts of China, a country that has recently banned clear-cutting. Efforts to restrict clear-cutting in the American Northwest have, however, mostly failed. As I recorded these scenes, I found myself considering many questions, among them: Is there a relationship between clear-cutting and war, the landscape of one being in some respects like the landscape of the other? Does clear-cutting teach violence? Does it contribute to nihilism?
About the photographer
1937, New Jersey, United States
American
United States
Robert Adams was born in New Jersey and moved to Colorado as a teenager. Adams was a professor of English literature for several years before turning his full attention to photography in the mid 1970s. His work is largely concerned with moments of regional transition: the suburbanisation of Denver, a changing Los Angeles of the 1970s and 1980s and the clear-cutting in Oregon in the 1990s. His many books include The New West, From the Missouri West, Summer Nights, Los Angeles Spring, To Make It Home, Listening to the River, West From the Columbia, What We Bought, Notes for Friends, California, Summer Nights: Walking, Gone?, What Can We Believe Where? and The Place We Live. Adams has also written a number of critical essays on the art of photography, including Beauty in Photography, Why People Photograph and, most recently, Along Some Rivers. Among many awards Adams has received the Guggenheim Fellowship (1973), the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1994) and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2006). In 2009, he was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.
In 2010, Yale University Art Gallery organised an international touring retrospective that highlighted Adams’ four decades of work. The tour began in Vancouver, British Columbia and travelled to the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Josef Albers Museum Quadrat, Bottrop, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris and the National Media Museum, Bradford.
Power Shortlist
Luc Delahaye, Various works, 2008 – 2011
Robert Adams, Turning Back, 1999-2001
Daniel Beltrá, Spill, 2010
Mohamed Bourouissa, Périphérique, 2005-2008
Philippe Chancel, Fukushima: The Irresistible Power of Nature, 2011
Edmund Clark, Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out, 2009
Carl De Keyzer, Moments Before the Flood, 2009-2011
Rena Effendi, Still Life in the Zone, 2010
Jacqueline Hassink, Arab Domains, 2005-2006
An-My Lê, 29 Palms, 2003
Joel Sternfeld, When it Changed, 2005
Guy Tillim, Congo Democratic, 1997-2006