American Silence

In this expansive monograph, Robert Adams’ compelling and provocative photographs explore the profound questions of our responsibility to the land and the moral dilemmas of progress.

Working in Colorado, California, and Oregon from 1965 to 2015, Adams photographed suburban sprawl, strip malls, highways, homes, and the land itself, seeking to reveal both the ravages we have inflicted on the land and its underlying, enduring beauty. His photographs of the western American landscape are imbued with a sense of the sacred. Adams transforms “the silence of light” he sees on the prairie, in the woods, and by the ocean into pictures that not only capture that beauty but can also question our own silent complicity in its desecration by consumerism, industrialization, and the lack of environmental stewardship. This substantial body of work-passionate but restrained, respectful but outraged-is united by the reverential way Adams looks at the world around him, and the almost palpable silence that permeates his art.

Copublished by the National Gallery of Art and Aperture

About the Authors

Robert Adams (born in Orange, New Jersey, 1937) has documented the American West in photographs that "face the facts" of humanity's imprint, yet offer hope of nature's resilience. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and two Guggenheim Fellowships, he is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Adams' work has been shown widely, including in major exhibitions at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Sarah Greenough is senior and founding curator of the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. She is also author of numerous books, including Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans (2009); The Altering Eye: Photographs from the National Gallery of Art (2015); and Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings (2018). She is recipient of the 2019 Visionary Award from the Association of International Photography Art Dealers and the 2018 Curatorship Award for Excellence from the Royal Photographic Society.

Terry Tempest Williams is a crucial voice for raising ecological awareness and has authored numerous books, from the classic Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991) to the more recent The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks (2016) and Erosion: Essays of Undoing (2019). Her work has been published in the New Yorker, New York Times, Orion Magazine, and anthologies worldwide. Williams is writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.