At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands before our camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect--a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.
Robert AdamsThe secret to peace-of-mind is to not identify with anything other than your true self.
Robert Adams...combining the concrete and the universal is at the center of what makes art important.
Robert Adams. . .art is a discovery of harmony, a vision of disparities reconciled, or shape beneath confusion.
Robert AdamsYou can't talk about life without talking about politics. You have to have both. If you're just a political person, you're going to burn out. If you, as an artist, are just focused inward, you're going to eventually be irrelevant.
Robert AdamsPhilosophy can forsake too easily the details of experienceโฆ many writers and painters have demonstrated that thinking long about what art is or ought to be ruins the power to write or paint.
Robert AdamsThe suburban West is, from a moral perspective, depressing evidence that we have misused our freedom. There is, however, another aspect to the landscape, an unexpected glory. Over the cheap tracts and littered arroyos one sometimes see a light as clean as that recorded by O'Sullivan. Since it owes nothing to our care, it is an assurance; beauty is final.
Robert Adams