Robert Adams: Contact

A compendium of never-before-published contact sheets from the iconic documentarian of the American West, spanning decades and formats, replete with his red-marker frame selections and handwritten notes Robert Adams’ photographs of the Western landscape are iconic reminders of nature’s resilience in the face of human development. But as this collection of never-before-published contact sheets shows, his precise arrangements of clouds, trees and roads under clear Colorado light were not inevitable. Instead, they are the result of Adams’ relentless searching for form and his inimitable, exacting photographic technique, as evidenced by prints marked with cropping lines, exposure times and other notes. The book pairs around 50 photographs with their original contact sheets, each showing the exposures from a single roll of medium format film, or with contact-printed 4x5 negatives and pencil-drawn printing guides. The photographs span 20 years, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, just before