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What We Bought: The New World: Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area, 1970-1974
denver and What We Bought , together with The New West , form a loose trilogy of Robert Adams’s work exploring the rapidly developing landscape of the Denver metropolitan area from 1968 through 1974. In the former two books, Adams created a comprehensive document that was resolute in its avoidance of romantic notions of the American West and dispassionately honest about man’s despoliation of the land. Both books demonstrate the artist at the height of his powers as a documentary photographer and a poetic sequencer of images. The photographs featured in denver and What We Bought show tract housing with mountain ranges in the distance, trailer lots devoid of people, suburban streets through generic windows, shopping mall interiors, and parking lots: subjects distinctly unspectacular, familiar, and banal. Adams’s compositions are straightforward and democratic, and it is this precise turn from sentimentality that has made Adams one of the most influential figures in the history of American photography. These exquisite new editions, printed in rich tritones, celebrate this landmark work. denver also includes new and previously unpublished photographs from the project, chosen and sequenced by Adams himself.
Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery
Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery
- GenresPhotography
208 pages, Hardcover
First published December 30, 1899
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About the author
Robert Adams
72 books40 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.
Robert Adams is an American photographer best known for his images of the American West. Offering solemn meditations on the landscapes of California, Colorado, and Oregon, Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature. “By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet. Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil,” he wrote. “What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.”
Born on May 8, 1937 in Orange, NJ, his family moved around the Midwest throughout his childhood, finally settling in Wheat Ridge, CO in 1952. Adams went on to study English at the University of Redlands and received his PhD in English from the University of Southern California in 1965. It wasn’t until the near completion of his dissertation for USC that Adams began to take photography seriously, learning techniques from professional photographer Myron Wood and reading Aperture magazine. In the 1970s, he released the book The New West (1974), and a year later was included in the seminal exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.” Adams has twice been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and once the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Adams lives and works in Astoria, OR. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
See this thread for more information.
Robert Adams is an American photographer best known for his images of the American West. Offering solemn meditations on the landscapes of California, Colorado, and Oregon, Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature. “By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet. Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil,” he wrote. “What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.”
Born on May 8, 1937 in Orange, NJ, his family moved around the Midwest throughout his childhood, finally settling in Wheat Ridge, CO in 1952. Adams went on to study English at the University of Redlands and received his PhD in English from the University of Southern California in 1965. It wasn’t until the near completion of his dissertation for USC that Adams began to take photography seriously, learning techniques from professional photographer Myron Wood and reading Aperture magazine. In the 1970s, he released the book The New West (1974), and a year later was included in the seminal exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.” Adams has twice been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and once the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Adams lives and works in Astoria, OR. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 10, 2023
I was drawn to this book from a piece by Robert Hass describing Robert Adams as the anti-Ansel Adams, as well as my ongoing curiosity with photobooks.
This book is a document of the suburbanization of Denver, Colorado from 1970-74- a town renowned for its physical beauty and, for that reason, became a target for ecological destruction as people were drawn towards it. As an historical document, I find it quite impressive, even when I find some of the photos themselves a bit bland. I suspect this is the point.
The book opens with a lone tree in a state of collapse, with a telephone pole and a road in the distance, hinting at the theme that follows throughout the book along with the structural composition of following from morning to night (many of these seem overexposed). Shots of nature colliding with human activity gradually give way towards a broader entrance of cars, stores, parking lots, and residential developments. While I liked many of these shots, they begin to wear on the viewer - an effect I thought was intentional. The second third of the book exits the surface-level exposure to these developments and confronts them directly via the interior. Shots of offices, manufacturing, and shopping malls dominate this part of the book. I found this the most impactful, as it differs the most from our time and contains the most human elements. Two shots that stood out to me: Hallmark on Valentines Day 1974, and a little girl pouting outside of a shopping complex (I felt that we were both wearying from all of this visual information). Finally, the book turns its focus to construction and new housing developments, eventually ending as the sun sets.
As a work of documentation, I found it highly effective in the same way I admired Monrovia, Indiana. I wish that the photographer had focused more on the artistry of some of the shots over mere documentation, but I don’t think that’s the point of a photobook. The poem at the end by W.S. Merwin was good but felt like it was trying a little hard thematically, when so much of the book had such a mild tone. I wonder, when Adams was taking these photos, whether he was filled with a sense of dread? The photos present a point of view, but the textual components are the pieces that really do the most to juxtapose it against - the contrast isn’t as visible in the photos themselves.
This book is a document of the suburbanization of Denver, Colorado from 1970-74- a town renowned for its physical beauty and, for that reason, became a target for ecological destruction as people were drawn towards it. As an historical document, I find it quite impressive, even when I find some of the photos themselves a bit bland. I suspect this is the point.
The book opens with a lone tree in a state of collapse, with a telephone pole and a road in the distance, hinting at the theme that follows throughout the book along with the structural composition of following from morning to night (many of these seem overexposed). Shots of nature colliding with human activity gradually give way towards a broader entrance of cars, stores, parking lots, and residential developments. While I liked many of these shots, they begin to wear on the viewer - an effect I thought was intentional. The second third of the book exits the surface-level exposure to these developments and confronts them directly via the interior. Shots of offices, manufacturing, and shopping malls dominate this part of the book. I found this the most impactful, as it differs the most from our time and contains the most human elements. Two shots that stood out to me: Hallmark on Valentines Day 1974, and a little girl pouting outside of a shopping complex (I felt that we were both wearying from all of this visual information). Finally, the book turns its focus to construction and new housing developments, eventually ending as the sun sets.
As a work of documentation, I found it highly effective in the same way I admired Monrovia, Indiana. I wish that the photographer had focused more on the artistry of some of the shots over mere documentation, but I don’t think that’s the point of a photobook. The poem at the end by W.S. Merwin was good but felt like it was trying a little hard thematically, when so much of the book had such a mild tone. I wonder, when Adams was taking these photos, whether he was filled with a sense of dread? The photos present a point of view, but the textual components are the pieces that really do the most to juxtapose it against - the contrast isn’t as visible in the photos themselves.
August 21, 2022
As with all of Robert Adams’s work, What We Bought is striking. Compositionally and aesthetically sound, the photos are also singular, notably in subject matter as well as what I like to call the “Adams Blowout”--the almost excessive brightness that you find in so many of his landscapes (which I used to credit as much to the high altitude light of Colorado as to Adams’s sensibilities, but he’s maintained this along the rainy, shadowy Northwest coast, so it’s safe to fully credit him).
Then there’s the personal connection. As one who grew up in Denver in the decade following Adams’s New West work, I find my connection to these photographs to be almost primordial. The cocktail of nostalgia and déjà vu they produce is visceral, and looking through a book like What We Bought is a meaningful if emotionally draining experience. I am grateful that an artist of Adams’s caliber chose to document my hometown at such a transitional point. These are annals, crucial to Denver’s cultural preservation.
In the introduction, Adams writes that “The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy,” and that Denver has been ruined. Yet, it’s been two decades since this was written--four since the photos were taken--and, in the interim, Denver has seen even greater booms (and all for same reasons as those previous: a near universal attraction to “the region’s natural beauty” or quality of life, as we’d label it today). Assuming that Adams’s motivation in taking these photographs was, at least in part, in hopes of sounding an alarm, then did he fail? Or, is it more accurate to ask if we failed? After all, where Adams saw destruction and unchecked growth, I mostly just see the sleepy cowtown of my youth.
Presently, though, I find myself in a position akin to Adams’s. The Denver of my early years--one quite similar to what’s found in What We Bought--is all but gone, replaced by a very large and rapidly-growing city. Is this just another case of history’s lessons going unheeded? Is all of this inevitable? Is it actually all that bad? Forty years on, Denver is almost unrecognizable from Adams’s photos, but it’s an even more thriving, diverse city--albeit one that’s more segregated and unaffordable.
I don’t have any clear answers, and I’m not sure Adams does either. But I do believe that spending time looking at and thinking about photos like those found in What We Bought is important, if for no other reason than it gets us asking these types of questions. What the next steps are, I’m unsure. Perhaps, it’s time to reconsider Adams’s critique--maybe we need to accept that these types of changes are more-or-less inevitable outcomes in our socio-economic system and learn to work with what we’ve got. Or, maybe we need to redouble our efforts. One thing is for sure, though: for all of Adams’s gloomy pronouncements, he was always able to find beauty, even in unlikely places. We owe it to ourselves, and Adams, to continue to do the same.
Then there’s the personal connection. As one who grew up in Denver in the decade following Adams’s New West work, I find my connection to these photographs to be almost primordial. The cocktail of nostalgia and déjà vu they produce is visceral, and looking through a book like What We Bought is a meaningful if emotionally draining experience. I am grateful that an artist of Adams’s caliber chose to document my hometown at such a transitional point. These are annals, crucial to Denver’s cultural preservation.
In the introduction, Adams writes that “The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy,” and that Denver has been ruined. Yet, it’s been two decades since this was written--four since the photos were taken--and, in the interim, Denver has seen even greater booms (and all for same reasons as those previous: a near universal attraction to “the region’s natural beauty” or quality of life, as we’d label it today). Assuming that Adams’s motivation in taking these photographs was, at least in part, in hopes of sounding an alarm, then did he fail? Or, is it more accurate to ask if we failed? After all, where Adams saw destruction and unchecked growth, I mostly just see the sleepy cowtown of my youth.
Presently, though, I find myself in a position akin to Adams’s. The Denver of my early years--one quite similar to what’s found in What We Bought--is all but gone, replaced by a very large and rapidly-growing city. Is this just another case of history’s lessons going unheeded? Is all of this inevitable? Is it actually all that bad? Forty years on, Denver is almost unrecognizable from Adams’s photos, but it’s an even more thriving, diverse city--albeit one that’s more segregated and unaffordable.
I don’t have any clear answers, and I’m not sure Adams does either. But I do believe that spending time looking at and thinking about photos like those found in What We Bought is important, if for no other reason than it gets us asking these types of questions. What the next steps are, I’m unsure. Perhaps, it’s time to reconsider Adams’s critique--maybe we need to accept that these types of changes are more-or-less inevitable outcomes in our socio-economic system and learn to work with what we’ve got. Or, maybe we need to redouble our efforts. One thing is for sure, though: for all of Adams’s gloomy pronouncements, he was always able to find beauty, even in unlikely places. We owe it to ourselves, and Adams, to continue to do the same.
September 3, 2009
Black and white photographs of the Denver area, 1970 - 1974, with an emphasis on ugly development rising out of the plain, and retail space. The pictures stand on their merit, but I especially like them because I was a child in Denver at that time, and this a record of the world I remember. Pictures of businesses that are gone, a less densely developed city with touches and hints of the prairie still in the city limits.
November 13, 2024
"In a few years, however, the area's ruin would be testament to a bargain we had tried to strike. The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy. They document a separation from ourselves, and in turn from the natural world that we professed to love. "
- Robert Adams
"I think it is essential to recognize the probable result of what we have done and are doing, but when we have seen that and its roots in human motives, the menaced world may seem more to be treasured than ever. Certainly the anguish and anger we feel at the threat to it and the sleepless despoiling of it can lose their tragic complexity and become mere bitterness when we forget that their origin is a passion for the momentary countenance of the unrepeatable world."
- W.S. Merwin
- Robert Adams
"I think it is essential to recognize the probable result of what we have done and are doing, but when we have seen that and its roots in human motives, the menaced world may seem more to be treasured than ever. Certainly the anguish and anger we feel at the threat to it and the sleepless despoiling of it can lose their tragic complexity and become mere bitterness when we forget that their origin is a passion for the momentary countenance of the unrepeatable world."
- W.S. Merwin
June 22, 2009
The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy. They document a separation from ourselves
-Robert Adams, What We Bought
-Robert Adams, What We Bought
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews