Robert Adams: An Old Forest Road

The subject of Robert Adams's latest book, An Old Forest Road, is the privilege of walking through a little-visited reserve of forest near the photographer's home in the American Northwest. Beyond the reserves there are miles of clearcuts.Sunlight plays a pivotal role in this sequence of pictures, piercing through a density of branches and leaves to reveal the hidden shapes and structure of the forest. Shadows, too, are prominent; they occlude the way forward, rendering it a portal to a destination unknown.Robert Adams has been a landscape photographer for fifty years, concerned to acknowledge both the landscape's mystery and our sometimes failed stewardship.