Robert Adams
27 Jun - 12 Sep 2009
ROBERT ADAMS
"Seascapes"
From 27 June - 12 September 2009
Opening reception: Sat, 27 June, 4 p.m.
Introduction: Dr. Heinz Liesbrock, Director of the Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop
Galerie Thomas Zander presents an exhibition of seascape photographs of the American photographer Robert Adams, who only recently received the Hasselblad Award 2009. The black and white seascapes belong to Adams's more recent work from the 1990s and were created in Oregon, where the artist has lived and worked for more than thirty years. Troubled by the impending war in the Persian Gulf and the progressive development of Astoria, Adams's hometown on the Columbia River, he began to document this familiar and cherished landscape of beaches, bluffs and jetties. His images contain a quiet warning to care for the preservation of nature.
Robert Adams became widely known as one of the most important artists of the "New Topographics" - a group of photographers who in their work explore the dialectical relationship between nature and civilization. Over a period of forty years, Adams has investigated the changing landscape of the American West and Northwest, an alteration caused by the increasing population and the human interference with nature. In his seminal series "The New West" from the 1980s, Adams touches on the myth of the American West and critically reflects on the inexorable change of the landscape and its limited resources. How we interact with our environment is the question that is at the center of Robert Adams's wide ranging work.
Born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1937, Adams earned a PhD in English from the University of Southern California and subsequently took up a teaching position at Colorado College. In the mid-1960s, Adams fully devoted himself to photography. Today the artist lives and works in Northwestern Oregon. In 1979, the Museum of Modern Art, New York mounted the first major solo exhibition or Robert Adams's work. Ever since, his work has been the subject of many international exhibitions and his photographs are in the permanent collections of leading museums throughout the world. In 2005 Adams had his first solo exhibition in Germany at the Sprengel Museum Hannover; in 2004 an exhibition was held at the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and a year later at the Haus der Kunst, Munich. Most recently his works have been on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Fondation Cartier. This fall, the Hasselblad Center in Göteborg, Sweden, devotes an exhibition to this year's Hasselblad Award winner Robert Adams.
More than ten books of Robert Adams's work have been published to date, among them "Turning Back" (2005), "Time Passes" (2007) and his influential publication "The New West", which was reissued in 2008. Adams received numerous awards, such as two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the renowned MacArthur Foundation Award and in 1995 the "Spectrum" International Prize for Photography of the Stiftung Niedersachsen. Only recently he accepted the Hasselblad Award 2009.
"Seascapes"
From 27 June - 12 September 2009
Opening reception: Sat, 27 June, 4 p.m.
Introduction: Dr. Heinz Liesbrock, Director of the Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop
Galerie Thomas Zander presents an exhibition of seascape photographs of the American photographer Robert Adams, who only recently received the Hasselblad Award 2009. The black and white seascapes belong to Adams's more recent work from the 1990s and were created in Oregon, where the artist has lived and worked for more than thirty years. Troubled by the impending war in the Persian Gulf and the progressive development of Astoria, Adams's hometown on the Columbia River, he began to document this familiar and cherished landscape of beaches, bluffs and jetties. His images contain a quiet warning to care for the preservation of nature.
Robert Adams became widely known as one of the most important artists of the "New Topographics" - a group of photographers who in their work explore the dialectical relationship between nature and civilization. Over a period of forty years, Adams has investigated the changing landscape of the American West and Northwest, an alteration caused by the increasing population and the human interference with nature. In his seminal series "The New West" from the 1980s, Adams touches on the myth of the American West and critically reflects on the inexorable change of the landscape and its limited resources. How we interact with our environment is the question that is at the center of Robert Adams's wide ranging work.
Born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1937, Adams earned a PhD in English from the University of Southern California and subsequently took up a teaching position at Colorado College. In the mid-1960s, Adams fully devoted himself to photography. Today the artist lives and works in Northwestern Oregon. In 1979, the Museum of Modern Art, New York mounted the first major solo exhibition or Robert Adams's work. Ever since, his work has been the subject of many international exhibitions and his photographs are in the permanent collections of leading museums throughout the world. In 2005 Adams had his first solo exhibition in Germany at the Sprengel Museum Hannover; in 2004 an exhibition was held at the Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop and a year later at the Haus der Kunst, Munich. Most recently his works have been on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Fondation Cartier. This fall, the Hasselblad Center in Göteborg, Sweden, devotes an exhibition to this year's Hasselblad Award winner Robert Adams.
More than ten books of Robert Adams's work have been published to date, among them "Turning Back" (2005), "Time Passes" (2007) and his influential publication "The New West", which was reissued in 2008. Adams received numerous awards, such as two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the renowned MacArthur Foundation Award and in 1995 the "Spectrum" International Prize for Photography of the Stiftung Niedersachsen. Only recently he accepted the Hasselblad Award 2009.