Colorado Springs, Colorado Possibly 1969 - 1990

Robert Adams made this photograph in Colorado Springs, using light and shadow to dig into ideas of progress, change, and the human mark on the landscape. The grayscale is so striking, right? It's a study in contrasts, like a black-and-white movie that pulls you in. Look at the starkness of the pit against the mountains in the distance. The man in the hole, he's like a figure in a dream, dwarfed by the scale of it all, maybe he's searching or maybe he's building. The ladder is an interesting visual element, it hints at ascent but looks almost useless, leaning precariously against the dirt. Adams makes me think of the New Topographics photographers and their interest in the mundane, but also the photographers of the American West, like Carleton Watkins. Adams shows us the beautiful and the awkward, the promise and the cost, all rolled into one frame. It's like he's saying, we're all just digging, searching for something, leaving our mark as we go.