This is a straightforward little book of essays that is both very accessible and profound. Robert Adams is a well-known photographer of the American West and was an exhibitor in the New Topographics show that influenced the course of contemporary landscape photography.
Speaking about beauty in art has become somewhat taboo, so it was refreshing to read a defence by an established artist. It is also helpful that Adams provides examples from his own work and the works of others to make his points—it is clear that his idea of beauty is neither saccharine nor sentimental. Instead, he sees beauty in those works of art that reveal form, an order or coherence that underlies all things. I was concerned at first that ‘order’ or ‘coherence’ might be construed in an overly rigid, traditional way, but this was not the case: there is plenty of allowance for scope, diversity and ‘newness.’
Some highlights for me:
“Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities—geography, autobiography, and metaphor.” (Adams, 1996: 14)
I think this is a helpful set of categories for thinking about what landscape images offer us: a record of what a location looked like at a given time; an insight into the one who made the image (what is important in his/her mind? what moved them to make this image in this way?); and a chance to think about what the image points to beyond itself, perhaps to more universal categories and stories. I will try to keep this in mind as I look at and make landscape images from here on.“… we would in most respects choose to spend thirty minutes with Edward Hopper’s painting Sunday Morning to thirty minutes on the street that was his subject; with Hopper’s vision we see more.” (Adams, 1996: 16)
I hadn’t thought about this before, but I suspect that it is true. We could spend time on that street trying to take in all its details, but not see what was true or important about it. At its best, art should enable us to see more. And better.“William Carlos Williams formulated the only resolution that is fully acceptable from an artist’s point of view: ‘No ideas but it in things.’ […] philosophy can forsake too easily the details of experience.” (Adams, 1996: 23)
I take this as a warning to myself to remember that art consists in the creation of things. Even abstract thought has to come to some kind of expression for it to be art.“If the proper goal of art is, as I now believe it, Beauty, the Beauty that now concerns me is that of Form. […] Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us to meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning.” (Adams, 1996: 24–25)
This hangs together throughout the book as Adams’ view and, as mentioned above, I was initially worried that this might be cover for a too-positive view of the world. I now see that Adams’ approaches beauty much more broadly and does not shy away from unappealing sights, as his own images of tract housing on once-pristine land show. I suspect that for Adams even sights that are repellent could show beauty of a sort, if they witness to some underlying form or truth. And art shows beauty and form through abstraction and simplification. (Adams, 1996: 25)“For a picture to be beautiful it does not have to be shocking, but it must in some some significant respect be unlike what preceded it (this is why an artist cannot afford to be ignorant of the tradition within his medium). If the dead end of the romantic vision is incoherence, the failure of classicism, which is the outlook I am defending, is the cliché, the ten-thousandth camera club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams.” (Adams, 1996: 27)
I think this expresses well the challenge of walking between the temptations of novelty for the sake of novelty and simply walking down the same well-worn path: enough newness to say something fresh and interesting, while remaining part of an ongoing conversation.“An artwork should not appear to have been hard work. I emphasize ‘appear’ because certainly no artwork is easy to make…” (Adams, 1996: 28)
To my mind, this means that the work should call attention to itself, rather than to its maker.“Is Truth Beauty and vice versa? The answer, as Keats knew, depends on the truth about which we are talking. For a truth to be beautiful, it must be complete, the full and final Truth. And that, in turn, leads me to a definition of Beauty linked unavoidably to belief.” (Adams, 1996: 32)
This is a trickier statement to unpack and it appears to be tied to Adams’ Christian faith. Where it is useful to a broader audience is the discussion that follows, where Adams distinguishes between the beautiful, the true and the significant. A significant picture can be important but not beautiful, because it does not tell the full or ultimate Truth.“…it is harder in photography than in painting to establish a recognizable style; this leads to desperate efforts to establish a style at any cost and in turn to the creation of technically accomplished but otherwise empty pictures that anger those who must write about them.” (Adams, 1996: 52)
I am sympathetic to this assertion and I think that what Adams says might be even more true in the era of digital manipulation. I see a lot of ‘overcooked’ landscape images with unnatural colours and angles of view, but that have been shot a hundred times from the same spot. What is the point? Perhaps style is better built through commitment not just to the medium but also to the subject matter.If pictures cannot be understood without knowing details of the artist’s private life, then that is a reason for faulting them; major art, by definition, can stand independent of its maker.” (Adams, 1996: 55)
Not much to say about this, except that Roland Barthes would agree re: the death of the author. And biography can’t make up for bad work.“Criticism’s job is to clarify art’s mystery without destroying it.” (Adams, 1996: 57)
I love this. I wish I had written it. It is also part of Adams’ discussion about why critics should only write about pieces that they love: it is easy but not helpful or satisfying to savage pieces that we don’t like. Adams also quotes with approval the following: “All people in this world are made to give evidence or to signify something. Perhaps it can be said as artists that some are made only to show what surface light does to color… Still others may be here only to reveal the possibilities of the color blue.” (Adams, 1996: 60)“…the static visual arts are not well suited to the direct exploration of evil.” (Adams, 1996: 69)
Adams makes this claim because he believes that a proper portrayal of evil and its consequences requires time, a narrative that is the property of some arts (fiction, theatre, film) but not others (photography). This may well be true; it is hard to think of effective portrayals of evil in still frames that do not require a greater understanding of a backstory.“And I am worried about the amount of time spent by photographers in trying to revive nineteenth-century photographic technology. There are conceivably interesting uses to be made of almost any photographic method, but so many contemporary enthusiasts for old ways seem to place their faith simply in the value of doing the antique thing once more. The results can be momentarily charming, but they are often finally sad, a footnote to history, arcane and a little saccharine.” (Adams, 1996: 82)
Ouch. This is connected to Adams’ belief that art has to produce the new and not slavishly copy old masters and what they have done. If we do this we become “advocates” of old artists rather than artists ourselves. Something to watch for.
Of course, readers who do not share Adams’ confidence in an underlying order of all things may not find his arguments as convincing. Nevertheless, they may still benefit from listening to a thoughtful discussion from someone who loves art and the world he portrays. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even in those spots where I was not fully convinced.
Reference
Adams, R. (1996) Beauty in photography: essays in defense of traditional values. (2nd ed) New York, N.Y: Aperture.
