Clearcut, Clatsop County, Oregon c. 2000

Robert Adams made this photograph in Clatsop County, Oregon. It's a landscape, but one where the making is all too visible, like exposed bone. Adams' stark monochrome gives a flattening effect that almost removes depth, turning distant ridges into paper cutouts. The eye travels over clear cut ground littered with debris, each twig and stump rendered with forensic clarity. Look at how these tiny details compete for our attention, they create a subtle visual tension. There's a directness here that reminds me of the Bechers’ photographic typologies, but without their cool detachment. Adams seems to be asking: how do we reckon with what we've done to the world, how do we go on? It is like he is having a conversation with people who made similar images, but also with the land, trying to find a way to show the destruction without losing sight of the underlying beauty. The picture holds both grief and a strange, unyielding hope.