Robert Adams: Turning Back: A Photographic Journal of Re-Exploration

This will probably be my last Adams book involving tree-oriented landscapes. I like Adams and his message, but I have "Gone?", "Tree Line" and now "Turning Back". As I see it, they're all the same. At the same time as admiring Adams, I have to wonder about his methods. As his photography goes, none of these would win any award in an amateur photo contest. Some of the photographs appear to be randomly composed at times, leaving you scratching your head as to what is being communicated here. There has to be a message because there is no particular beauty in Robert Adams work. He may be an Adams, but he is no Ansel and of course I understand why: his take is more documentary than appealing. A casual observer though would flip through any of his tree books in a minute and state "Well I could have done that." and that is a problem if you have an agenda like Adams: you have to grip the viewer if you need to say something to him. If you're an educated Adams viewer, that's fine, but if you're not then it does little good for your message if you don't get a larger audience; you're simply preaching to the choir.

This book may seem a bit inaccessible at first, but rewards those willing to spend time with it. The images are of forests, mostly in Oregon, close to the place Bob Adams has made home for the last decade. In this landscape, Adams finds elements that resonate both with the past and the present, celebrating what remains, but also showing very clearly the damage done. The most savage pictures are those of clear cuts, where the stumps of the virgin forests still remain, but the effect seems more to be from war rather than commerce. These images are all the more striking when we consider the images we have not seen from our recent history.

Boy, is this a waste. Perhaps an attempt to decry deforestation, this book is just a whole bunch of bad black & white photos of tree stumps. 100 pages of it anyway. Then there are 25 pages of wholly ordinary photos of some extremely underexposed trees and disjunctive tree parts.If the author wanted to make a statement he should have reconsidered publishing this book, since after all it was made from a tree.

Adams himself has said this is the book he believes to be his best and I agree. Brilliant work, effective and powerful in such subtle ways that the emotion sneaks up on you. A must for any serious collector or a great resource for any fine art photographer. Pure poetry.

Although I have enjoyed Robert Adams earlier work, I am having difficulty seeing the photographic merit of this current project.If one reads the text with the explanation that Adams is attempting to show some of the destruction of the wilderness caused by a man in the areas that were explored by Lewis and Clark, then there is a context and a meaning to be had. But if you look at the photographs on their own, without any explanation of the intent of the photographer, they appear to be bland and boring.

Its Robert Adam's .....what more can you want?Honestly, a great look at some of his (in my opinion) best work.

This is not a 'coffee table' book, but one which requires serious thought and study. Ostensibly about clear cutting in Oregon, it is a commentry on our world and what we are doing to it. He does offer hope but it is a thin one. It should be essential study for all photographers involved in environmental photography, in fact anyone concerned with our present attitudes to the world we all live in. Robert Adams most important book yet,but a demanding book to 'read'.

Robert Adams is a significant American Photographer. Adam's photographs and this book are a reminder how much of our natural world has been destroyed by the greed of the forest industry in the Pacific Northwest. Adams has shown devastation inflicted on the landscape as Mathew Brady showed Civil War battlefields. This book goes further and is a superb book to own.

il libro da vedere molte volte, infondo e' un maestro, possiamo non condividere il genere ma aprire la mente e' doveroso.