Adams continued

"Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny but that carry with them a reminder of community." - Robert Adams

I believe that Robert Adams does have a point in what he is talking about in the quote above. Without his photography, I wouldn't have been inspired to take pictures in the same style he did-and pay homage to him. My pictures wouldn't even exist without his influence. 

Robert Adams traveled all over the U.S.A. to take photographs. Mr. Adams liked to take his pictures in black and white; this is because he liked to capture the loneliness of the picture and he liked to bring his viewers into a state of curiosity- so they were wondering about what the picture could've signified to Robert Adams. I've noticed that Robert Adams liked to take pictures with trees involve- but not trees with ravishing green leaves- but withering trees. Adams thought that the 19th century photographers were privileged because they had skies that could show what part light played in their photos. 

"Their cameras could take their fill of scenes that are now obscured or faded out by an amorphous whiteness against which the reminiscent photographer now has to struggle to describe depth." (http://www.profotos.com/education/referencedesk/masters/masters/robertadams/robertadams.shtml)


To me, it seems as Robert was a little envious of what people in the 19th century could do with their cameras, so in my opinion, I think that is what inspired him. He liked to show depth in his pictures. Depth also made pictures interesting- so he took original things that we see everyday (like trees) and shot them in a way which depth was expressed-and he also made them black and white to show the "whiteness" in his photographs to better create depth.

Mr. Robert Adams

Robert Adams was an American photographer who was born in Orange County, New Jersey, on May 8th, 1937. When he approached his teenage years, Robert and his family all moved to Colorado. The landscapes of Western America caught his interest and he documented them. His pictures were usually in black and white. Before he was a photographer, he was an English Literature professor for some time. His goal was to capture how neutral the landscape was. All of his photographs were mainly of what humans had created: houses that were still under construction. an empty road, etc and they were usually things that are eye-catching/interesting. His photographs represented that "the landscapes were an unlimited natural resource for human consumption." For my photography class, we needed to choose an artist who we want to pay homage to. 

What does paying homage to someone mean? You could look up the definition on the internet and come up with something like this: "To pay homage is something done or given in acknowledgment or consideration of the worth of another," but in my own words, it means to give respect to someone who you are inspired by.  

*Some of Robert Adam's work:

 In the words of John Szarkowski, Adams... "has, without actually lying, discovered in these dumb and artless agglomerations of boring buildings the suggestion of redeeming virtue." 

During Robert's summer nights (beginning in 1974), he would walk around town or on rural roads and take photographs of things- police often questioned him about what he was doing at night and motorists usually veered towards him because he was on the rural roads.

 Robert Adams liked to take pictures of buildings, trees, people-everything. He liked to include the simplicity in the photographs he took and he liked to bring that to life. He took beautiful photos. His photographs are featured in galleries all around the U.S.A and countries overseas.-such as galleries that are located in San Francisco, CA to London, France. His photos are also featured in many, many books. The two most recent are Questions for an Overcast Day, Matthew Marks Gallery (2007) and Time Passes, Steidl (2007).

American Photography

The Brownie camera was the first camera that could be hand-held and that made the process of capturing photos much easier-and it was cheap and simple enough for children to use.

It all started in 1900, when the Kodak photo company came out with the Brownie camera, it was sold everywhere for just $1.00. People everywhere were taking snap shots of everything-and it was weird because people usually got their photos taken once in a while and it wasn't very common for people to walk around and take pictures. "Kodak claimed in its advertisements that the Brownie camera was "so simple they can easily [be] operated by any school boy or girl" (excerpt from an ad in Cosmopolitan Magazine, July 1900)." (http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/p/brownie.htm) Also, the owner of the camera did not have to invest in the Brownie camera because for 15 cents, Kodak sold a six-cartridge film exposure that could be loaded in daylight-so you did not need a dark room and other materials to load your photos up. The way the Brownie camera looked was rectangular shaped, and it was black and had imitation leather surrounding it. All you had to do to take a photo was to hold it waist height, aim your camera at what image you wanted to shoot, flip a switch and that was it. The Brownie camera changed the future of photography forever and it was said that "the Eastman Kodak Company sold over a quarter of a million Brownies." (http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/p/brownie.htm).