The Oracle of Astoria

Photographer Rian Dundon mentioned to me recently that his young photography students would probably not recognize Robert Adams as an important influence, and I was surprised and shocked. I can’t imagine photographers not being influenced by Robert Adams. Thinking about it, I wondered if perhaps the reason is that I came of age as an artist when there were fewer voices to be heard, and today with the Internet and YouTube anyone can set themselves up as an authority – and many people do.

I suppose as well that the issues that animated and engaged a prior generation have given way to new ones, although you can also argue that in photography the issues have not really changed; AI is just another way to manipulate images, and the big questions are the same. Is it better to use photographs to interpret and document the world, or is it okay to invent new worlds? Am I going to be an artist, a journalist, an entertainer, or a sociologist, or are categories like that not mutually exclusive? What is my responsibility, if any, to my audience? And what about theory? What part should it play in my practice? Do I have to check certain boxes for my work to pass muster?

Adams has been a guiding spirit for other photographers not simply because of his work but also because of his ideas as expressed in his writings. He doesn’t do Theory but he seems to know about it. Instead he discusses questions and issues, and he has worked out well reasoned arguments backed up by an encyclopedia of authorities – painters and poets, photographers and philosophers, novelists and filmmakers. There seems to be no one he has not read or thought about.

Adams’ writing is free of artifice and reads like poetry boiled down to the bones. Some people may be annoyed by his high-mindedness, his virtuousness, both in his photographs as well as his writing. It is true that he can sound like an older relative cheerfully admonishing you to be good and do your best. Adams’ straightness of character channels my own small-town petit bourgeois ancestors, a number of whom also lived on the Oregon Coast. His tone of moral concern as he fights off darkness and despair is always there in the background. Consider for example the title of his recent book, Words That Helped. Helped what? Well, probably not his golf swing. More likely they helped him keep his perspective, optimism, and sense of purpose.

Because of how well he shares the ideas and reasons behind his choices in art, I like to think of Robert Adams as the Oracle of Astoria.  

In 1985 I spent part of an afternoon with him, sitting at his feet as an aspiring young artist, and over the years I have occasionally written him letters of the snail-mail variety. He generously has always responded – unlike any of the other photographers I have ever written to – and with old-fashioned hand-written letters. Besides addressing my questions, he typically has included comments lamenting the sad state of political or social affairs. My guess is that he must have maintained many epistolary relationships, and at some point in the future we may be treated to the publication of his correspondence with his contemporaries in art and literature. Who still does that today among artists and thinkers?

As for his writing, Adams’ 1981 Beauty in Photography in particular was so important to me that it became like a bible – night table reading like Thoreau or Pascal’s Pensées. I can still quote parts of it from memory, tattooed as they were onto my earnest twenty-something soul. For instance, in his essay “Civilizing Criticism” Adams writes, “… photographic criticism is currently mostly the province of the young, some of whom have not yet often enough made fools of themselves to be cautious or suffered enough to be charitable.” Zing.

His suggestion from 1985 still seems valid today: “Why … do we have so few pictures of family life in America? Where are our pictures of the actual experience of working in industry? And where, despite all the photography students, are our pictures of what it is like to be a student in a large university?” (Note the community-oriented mindset of the possessive “our.”)

Adams is especially good at presenting his ideas through other artists’ thoughts. Here are some examples from Beauty in Photography:

“Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?”

“…writers (should) be forced to emulate the eighth-century Chinese poet Po Chii, who is said to have read his work to an elderly peasant woman and changed whatever phrasing puzzled her.”

“A Shakespeare professor of mine, William Main, … used to argue … that there are really only two kinds of literature – modern literature and history. Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, and Joyce are, he would assert, all modern literature.”

In terms of his photography, Adams and a few others (those privileged somehow to get their work into print) led the way in organizing their work as books. I do not have all or even most of Adams’ books on my overstuffed photobook shelves, but the one that stands out on my best-photobooks-of-all-time list is Summer Nights (1985). When I look at it, I think of Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night, although the subject is quite different. For me, both film and book explore the summer as a fleeting moment of freedom and possibility. The photographs in Adams’ book are supremely well printed, and you almost feel like you are there. You can cut them out and frame them they look so good.

To be sure, there are many photographers whose work and accomplishments I admire. But none have in addition offered such insightful clarity – such useful guidance – as Robert Adams. What can you say about someone who has profoundly influenced your choices and your practice? Words are inadequate, but here goes.

Thank you, Robert Adams!