Weld County, Colorado 1984

Editor: This is Robert Adams' "Weld County, Colorado," a gelatin silver print from 1984. It feels incredibly vast and somehow both peaceful and ominous. The clouds take up so much space. What strikes you about this image? Curator: Vast indeed! It feels like standing at the edge of the world, doesn't it? The beauty is laced with… well, let's just say I wouldn’t want to be caught in that downpour! Adams is a master of quiet unease. He finds the sublime in the everyday, the beautiful even in what some might consider bleak. It's not a postcard-perfect landscape, is it? Editor: No, it definitely isn't. The grey scale, the flatness… it’s very different from a typical landscape painting. Curator: Precisely! That monochrome flattens everything, strips it down. Think of the endless western expansion, the taming of the wild… did they really make it better or just different? Adams always seemed to ask what the cost of progress is. Does this make you feel nostalgic or uneasy? Editor: Uneasy, definitely. Like something's been lost, maybe. So, he's using beauty to talk about loss? Curator: Maybe not 'using', exactly. More like 'finding'. Beauty, like pain, is often right there next to everything else. He holds them up together. It’s the tension, that in-between space, that is key to finding something great and timeless about something so fleeting. Editor: That’s really interesting. I never thought about landscape photography that way, but now I have something new to ponder about beauty. Curator: Good! Because I would want the visitors to think of this landscape to not be what it is on the surface, and discover much more.