Oregon 1999 - 2001

Robert Adams made this photograph, Oregon, using gelatin silver to bring the scene to life. The grays go on forever, don’t they? The way the light plays with all of those surfaces, it’s like Adams is thinking out loud with his camera. The surface is super important here. I mean, look at the toothy head of that logging machine, how it chomps into the earth. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Hey, nature, meet industry.” And the contrast, right? The dark, heavy metal against the mess of what's been cleared away. You can almost feel the weight of it, the impact. Then there’s the sky, all soft and cloudy, like a sigh. I keep wondering, what's Adams telling us? Is it about loss, change, or maybe just seeing what’s really there, even when it's not pretty? It’s like when someone like Lewis Baltz takes a look at mundane places and makes you see something new.