The exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, opened at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York in 1975. The exhibition included 168 works by ten artists: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Scott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr. Despite the initial limited audience and appreciation for the exhibition, the short-hand title New Topographics would go on to categorize the photographers included in the exhibition, as well defining a new approach to landscape photography. While most of the photographers included in the exhibition focused on systemically documenting vernacular architecture, albeit in different styles, Robert Adams was the most explicitly concerned with environmentalism. Works by Adams included in the exhibition, taken in 1973 and 1974, primarily pictured mobile homes and tract housing in the Longmont, Colorado area, where Adams and his wife, Kirsten, resided.
Adams purchased his first camera in 1963 and only two years later was deftly operating a 4 x 5-inch view camera, documenting the landscape on the Colorado plains. He had reduced the hours he spent teaching, preferring instead to spending t.mes photographing the wilderness, as well as documenting evidence of the expanding suburban lands adjacent to it. By the end of the 1960s, Adams felt compelled to adjust his approach to photography, inspired primarily by a suggestion Dorothea Lange had made. ‘She had called for the building up of a file about “the life of the American people in the 1960s, with particular emphasis on urban and suburban life.” She thought that this record should ‘be concentrated on what exists and prevails’ and should not ‘be an outlet for passionate personal protest.’ (Michael Kohler, “Interview of Robert Adams,” Camera Austria 9, 1982).
Adams has commented that his decision to pursue this calling marked a tidal shift in the way he approached photography. First, he abandoned his cumbersome 4 x 5-inch view camera for a 2 ¼-inch Hasselblad. This lighter camera, used without a tripod, enabled him to make more rapid exposures. Adams' darkroom methodology would also change. While he was an ardent fan of Ansel Adams, he no longer approached the making of his own prints with the Zone System in mind. Instead of utilizing Ansel Adams’ widely-used system to create an image with a full range of tones, from inky blacks to bright whites, Robert Adams evaluated each negative individually, recognizing that each presented its own special set of compositional and tonal puzzles. Most noticeably, Adams embraced the everyday. He photographed the tract housing, the truck stops, the gas stations, and the overpasses, presenting each composition with a cool detachment devoid of nostalgia.
Adams' efforts from 1968 are subtle, lyrical odes to the banal and mundane. 17 images from the series were published in 1999 as Eden, an homage to the nondescript area Adams encountered off Interstate 25.
‘Eden, Colorado, is named after a railroad official and not the Biblical paradise. To the east of the interstate highway that bisects it are railroad tracks, gas tanks, and a prefabricated metal shed. To the west, a roadhouse (closed), a military salvage lot, a car-wrecking yard, and the Westland truck stop. Extending beyond along the freeway are billboards advertising whiskey, real estate, and ice. Except for casual greetings from the waitresses in the cafe, Eden is a place without human gentleness. The air is weighted by the sound of traffic. There is, however, another aspect to this spot, one that can be set forth only in riddles. Stuart Davis, when he described his goal as an artist, talked of it: “I am not looking for something newer or greater,” he said. “Everything new and great already exists- has always existed. We need to make our connection with it.”’
