Robert Adams, artist

Perhaps no other photographer has been more responsible for the artistic and critical developments that have shaped American landscape photography during the past three decades. Adams was among the first photographers to confront the intrusion of settlement and development in the West. Instead of relegating his photography to the sliver of the landscape that was still wilderness, Adams began to photograph the housing subdivisions that spread north from Denver along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Although his style is often seen as direct and austere, the sensitive quality of his printing reflects an empathy both for these places and for their fate.