Robert Adams: Standing Still

For much of his long career, Robert Adams has photographed the regions where he has lived, recording the transformation of the Western landscape into suburbs in Colorado, or documenting the destruction left in the wake of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. In recent years his focus has often turned to more intimate landscapes, as he has depicted the area around his home near the Oregon coast, where he has lived for more than 20 years. Standing Still celebrates a small front yard—its verdancy, and the changing light and seasons throughout the year. The black and white photographs record a lawn and its border of shrubs and small trees; a stone bird bath; deer; and Adams’ wife Kerstin. They show a landscape immersed in fog and dusted with snow, or bathed in warm sunlight. In this quiet place, “each day can be the first day,” writes Adams.