‘What has made Robert Adams so fierce and necessary as an artist, especially to anyone who has grown up in the West in the postwar years, is the shock of familiarity in his work. . .Image after image of things we have seen but not noticed, or noticed and not seen, or don’t remember having seen or noticed, while recognizing that we’ve been seeing them all our lives. It’s as if, on the road between the photographs of Western photographers like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and the sunny pastels of the beach at Santa Monica or the lush gardens of San Marino, we have simply, out of aesthetic habit, been editing out the entire visible world, and he has taken it on himself to show us what we haven’t been seeing.'
Robert Adams photographed vernacular architecture throughout the Colorado Springs area in the 1960s and 1970s, including tract houses, mobile homes, strip malls, and movie theaters. Adams was particularly interested in those structures that bordered wilderness areas. Pikes Peak, likely taken from the outskirts of Colorado Springs, shows a closed Frontier gas station against a night sky polluted by light caused by suburban sprawl, the looming mountain peak creating a rocky horizon in the distance.
Adams photographed gas and service stations in many locations, but perhaps the most haunting are those taken at night. These spaces, lively and animated during the day, become mysterious and cinematic in darkness. In this stillness, Adams focuses our attention on details missed in the light of day: the uniform tombstones of gas pumps, peeling paint, a particular typeface used for signage, burnt-out lightbulbs.
Ed Ruscha most.mes morably used the gas station as muse for Standard Station, a series of paintings and prints he created in various sizes, colors, and media throughout the 1960s. The highly recognizable image of the American gas station carries considerable cultural weight, and Ruscha seized upon this symbol for its association with the American vernacular landscape, reliance on petroleum, and the rapid expansion of suburban areas into previously wild terrain. The station sign, ‘Frontier,’ echoes this message, alluding to both the need for gasoline to seek adventure in an automobile, while also being a cause of environmental damage.
Prints of this image are rare. There is a similarly early print of the image in a private San Francisco collects
ion and a later print at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.