Northglenn, Colorado Possibly 1974 - 1988

Editor: This photograph, "Northglenn, Colorado," by Robert Adams, thought to be from somewhere between 1974 and 1988, really captures this feeling of… quiet unease. There's a very rigid composition to this shot, and it somehow adds to that. What do you make of this work? Curator: That quiet unease, I think, is exactly the point. Adams was so brilliant at capturing the new American West – not the romanticized version, but the stark reality of suburban sprawl. This image, with its boxy houses and the network of power lines, it feels both familiar and subtly dystopian. I feel almost pinned under that low gray sky, somehow. Do you see that feeling here, too? Editor: Definitely. It's interesting that he manages to convey all of that with such seemingly… mundane imagery. What I’m not really seeing, though, is any kind of striking aesthetic flair that one might typically seek. Curator: Ah, but isn’t that the flair itself? The conscious decision *not* to prettify, to document without sentimentality. It’s a kind of quiet protest, or maybe just a weary observation, capturing something in its mundane moment that hints at a wider truth. He is definitely a “see the unseen” type. Does it change anything for you to consider Adams’ viewpoint? Editor: It really does! Framing it as intentional— the absence of flair *as* a flair, somehow— helps to ground the experience, and it also offers an artistic depth and meaning that I can latch onto. It speaks of critical reflection in the most subdued of settings. Thanks so much. Curator: And thank you for considering with new eyes something you had already looked at once, for in that little turn we can discover more than ever imagined before.