The word beauty is unavoidable โฆ it accounts for my decision to photograph โฆ There appeared a quality, beauty seemed the only appropriate word for it, in certain photographs, and I am compelled to live with the vocabulary of this new sight โฆ through over many years [I] still find it embarrassing to use the word beauty, I fear I will be attacked for it, but I still believe in it.
Robert AdamsWhat we hope for from the artist is help in discovering the significance of a place. In this sense we would choose in most respects for thirty minutes with Edward Hopperโs painting Sunday Morning to thirty minutes on the street that was his subject; with Hopperโs vision we see more.
Robert AdamsBeauty, which I admit to being in pursuit of, is an extremely suspect word among many in the art world. But I don't think you can get along without it. It's the confirmation of meaning in life.
Robert AdamsLandscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - the affection for life.
Robert Adams