Robert Adams, Oregon, 1999-2003
Photographer Robert Adams may be the main event of the autumn programme at Fondation Cartier, but his modest black and white images of Northwest American deforestation sites and coastal vistas would be robbed of their elemental potency in the sheer glass interiors of the upper spaces. And so to the basement... But, given the individual scale and number of works - some 150 - this is an entirely appropriate decision.
Over lunch I concur with current custodian of Adams's vast back catalogue of publications, assistant curator of Yale University Art Gallery Joshua Chuang that small photographs often do not benefit from being shown in lofty industrial interiors. The comparatively low ceiling of this subterranean space successfully contains the energy coursing through each paradoxically quivering still. And, in any case, Adams doesn't deal in the brand of wow factor that makes current gallery partner Lee Bul such a worthy tenant for the cathedral element of Jean Nouvel's sublime structure.
As arresting as his imagery can be - Adams' depictions of nature violated, for example, are fraught with photojournalistic tension - ultimately the drama of any given scene recorded is pushed to the fringes of each frame allowing the issues uncovered to speak for themselves. As the debate continues to rage over the packaging of photography as art, and vice versa, these images seem more relevant than ever, for Adams - having documented the world from both sides of this creative fence - literally inhabits the conceptual breach.
For those unfamiliar with Adams work, this particular exhibition, though consummately produced on every level, would give little idea of his impact on American image-making of the past forty years and slow influential burn through the photographic community at large. At first spec they offer a stuttering, repetitive ride through the issue of the age - ecological imbalance. On the other side, though, of the load-bearing wall dissecting the space, Adams' historic relevance to the medium is revealed in the form of a choice selection of his, often personally produced, publications.
Robert Adams, Burning Oil Sludge North of Denver, Colorado
Adams' career in photography developed from of a series of documentary images he was asked to produce in the sixties of the western American landscape, not as an artist but a doctor of English literature. Following in the survey tradition of fellow country folk photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, Adams' curiosity with this swiftly evolving geography and new medium of expression resulted in several series of images that went some way to defining the sociological reality of and political agendas shaping America's heartland. In the seminal 1974 book 'The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range', Adams' spare shots of the boxy architecture characterising this emergent suburban hinterland offered an uncompromising glimpse of the juggernaut of commerce riding rough shod over the rural landscape.
But where does the notion of art fit within Adams' making process? Taking in these broken pathways through time horizontally dividing the walls of the gallery space, it's initially possible to believe that you can own all they convey in a single journey. As black and white photographic depictions of the land and sea they are familiar, not to mention rather beautiful. Adams' focus appears to be on what literally can be seen, not the creation of pictorial devices that purposely guide us towards his version of the truth. But in the process of quietly and consistently capturing the things that matter he has developed a subtle visual shorthand that references other forms of image-making.
The repetition of intimately scaled stills is very filmic. Amongst the sequence of images that make up the 'Turning Back' series from 1999-2003 - depicting evidence the "clear-cutting" technique employed by the paper companies of completely stripping out sections of forest - are some Hitchcockian moments of pure shock. Trees ripped and rent from the ground litter the forest floor in man-made trenches like the victims of a violent eco war; a cloud hovering over a single, remaining tree appears like a nuclear mushroom on the build.
There are barely any humans present, just evidence of their suspect toil (lone machinery, beer cans propped on dismembered stumps) but the way Adams pans out of the direct action is reminiscent of civil war photography where distance from the subject was necessitated by the limitations of the equipment. Meanwhile, his use of the ancient geometric construct the Golden Pyramid (a compositional mainstay of Renaissance painters) alerts us to the scale of this environmental problem.
Where the forest series provides a relentless trip through nature's ruin, the neighbouring images of the sea as a vital, unquantifiable natural element are imbued with a melancholic sense of hope. Again, there is may be little evidence of humans or urbanity, but the seascapes appear framed and selected with a sociological eye. Where Ansel Adams worshipped nature, this Adams' records the events that shape the natural world at a respectful distance - as if giving us space within which to connect the elemental with our everyday lives. Here, the sea, often churning and spilling towards us has the unbridled quantity of a monster on the loose all the while reminiscent in scale of a more local spillage - like a pool of beer that for an instant you cannot predict how far it will spread. It is perhaps the fact that Adams has remained local to the areas he photographs that ultimately separates these works from their journalistic counterparts. Adams is not in hot pursuit of a story - this is his story.
Rebecca Geldard
Robert Adams
Until 27 January 2008
Fondation Cartier
261 Boulevard Raspail
75014 Paris
T +33 (1) 42 18 56 50
Rebecca Geldard is a freelance writer and critic living in London.
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