Robert Adams: Turning Back
At the Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, (212) 243-0200, through Saturday.
Turning Back is a major new body of work, the scope of which is far greater than that of any survey the artist has previously undertaken. The photographs in this exhibition were inspired by the bicentennial of Lewis and Clarkâs journey across the Northwest Territory to the Pacific Ocean. To make these pictures, Adams has taken an abbreviated version of the trip, but in reverse, beginning on the West Coast, traveling across the Cascade Mountain Range, and moving into the plains of eastern Oregon.
The black and white photographs of Robert Adams records what is scarred, flawed and humdrum. Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times has a great article about the exhibit entitled: Picturing the West: Scarred, Flawed, Beautiful