Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
I’ve been so lonely trying to become a photographer. If I’d known that before, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to do it again.
A photographer can describe a better world only by better seeing the world as it is in front of him.
Photography and poetry both center on metaphor.
If, as a personal matter, I have chosen not to make color pictures, it is because I have remembered how hard it is to write good free verse, with which color photography has some similarities, both being close to what occurs naturally.
As I understand my job, it is, while suggesting order, to make things appear as much as possible to be the way they are in normal vision.
Artists sometimes claim that they work without thought of an audience—that they make pictures just for themselves. We are not deceived. The only reward worth that much effort is a response, and if no one pays attention, or if the artist cannot live on hope, then he or she is lost.
Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?
Scenic grandeur is today sometimes painful. The beautiful places to which we journey for inspiration surprise us by the melancholy they can induce... Unspoiled places sadden us because they are, in an important sense, no longer true.
