Robert Adams’s latest book presents 15 new photographs depicting a sculpture of the goddess Thalia, the Muse of pastoral poets. Made at home using changing window light, the images record the classical planes and proportions of the statue’s face, and the peaceful corner where it sits. A daughter of Zeus in Greek mythology, Adams’s version of Thalia is based on a second-century Roman sculpture in the collection of the Vatican Museum.
Poetry has long been a source of solace and pleasure for Adams, who studied literature and worked as an English professor before turning to photography. The book also reflects Adams’s longstanding interest in sculpture; his own woodworking and painted woodblocks have been the subject of recent publications.
In Thalia, Adams records the varieties of light and shadow that fall on the sculpture, finding beauty through the hopeful act of persistent looking at a single object. He writes of the sculpture, “Despite the world’s periodic darkness, an anonymous sculptor recorded serenity in a human face.”
