{"data":{"id":"4418","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":4418,"topgoose_id":17,"tms_id":4418,"display_name":"Robert Adams","sort_name":"Adams Robert","display_date":"1937–","begin_date":"1937","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eRobert Adams is often identified as a preeminent member of the New Topographics, a label used to describe the work of a group of photographers featured in a 1975 exhibition of that name with the subtitle \u003cem\u003ePhotographs of a Man-\nAltered Landscape\u003c/em\u003e. These photographers eschewed the picturesque, heroicized aspects of traditional landscape photography for a more sober approach, frequently documenting the transformation— and often, the destruction—of natural environments in the wake of urbanization and industrialization. For the past four decades, Adams’s focus has been the changing landscape of the American West. His virtuoso black-and-white images are generally devoid of people but capture the traces and effects of human intervention, implicitly contrasting wilderness with aspects of development and technology. Adams’s photographs give the lie to the romance of the West as a frontier of endless promise even as they glorify the natural beauty that endures there, however precariously.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike much of Adams’s early work picturing suburban areas in Colorado, \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/40305\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eOutdoor Theater, Colorado Springs, Colorado\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003erecords the incursion of contemporary\nsociety—in the form of a section of a fence\naround a drive-in movie theater—on\notherwise unspoiled territory. The spare,\nstriking image exemplifies the artist’s\nfeel for compositional harmony: a horizontal\nband of pavement on the lower edge of\nthe image offsets the vertical fencing, and\nthe diagonal created by a stretch of\nclouds counterpoises the incline of the\ntop edge of the fence.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500037036","wikidata_id":null,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:26:32.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-26T07:00:37.023-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/4418/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/4418/exhibitions"}}}}