Abandoned Car, Carbon County, Wyoming, from "The Missouri West" series

1977

American, born 1937

Exploration of the West began in the Nineteenth Century at the Missouri River. On its banks pioneers understood themselves to be at the edge of a sublime landscape, one that they believed would be redemptive. My own ancestors, as it happens, settled along the river, and my grandfather made enthusiastic trips onto the Dakota prairies to make panoramic photographs. For these reasons, and because I had lost my way in the suburbs, I decided to try to rediscover some of the land forms that had impressed our forebears. Was there remaining in the geography a strength that might help sustain us as it had them? I set one ground rule—to include in the photographs evidence of man; it was a precaution in favor of truth that was easy to follow since our violence against the earth has extended even to anonymous arroyos and undifferentiated stands of scrub brush.
—Robert Adams, in From the Missouri West

Gelatin silver print

8 15/16 in. x 11 1/8 in. (22.7 x 27.6 cm)

Gift of Dr. R. Joseph Monsen and Dr. Elaine R. Monsen

82.199

Provenance: [Dr. R. Joseph Monsen and Dr. Elaine R. Monsen]; to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1982

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, 200 Photographs from the Museum Collection, Dec. 8, 1983 - Feb. 5, 1984. Text by Rod Slemmons. No cat. no.

Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Robert Adams Photographs, Nov. 17, 1987 - Jan. 31, 1988.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Paving of Paradise: A Century of Photographs of the Western Landscape, May 7, 1998 - Jan. 24, 1999.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, New Topographics, June 30, 2018 - Apr. 14, 2019.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

Learn more about Equity at SAM