From the Missouri West.

Photographs by Robert Adams. Edited by Joshua Chuang.

Steidl, Gottingen, Germany, 2018. 132 pp., 62black-and-white illustrations, 15½x13½".

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2018 by:

John Gossage

The views of the American West collected in From the Missouri West evoke a wide range of memories, myths and regrets associated with America’s frontier. In the 19th century, that frontier began at the Missouri River, beyond which lay a landscape of natural grandeur and purity. When Robert Adams (born 1937) shot that landscape, between 1975 and 1983, the hand of man had not so much disfigured as domesticated that paradise. Humans had left their marks almost casually, with the assurance of absolute triumph. Adams recorded these intrusions with neither judgment nor irony; the land he shows has simply been changed, reduced, made ordinary. Yet a second look makes it apparent that the hand of man has, after all, its limitations.

First published in 1980, From the Missouri West marked a watershed in the history of landscape photography by reclaiming the West’s sublimity as again worthy of rigorous consideration. The link between Adams and photographers who surveyed the Western landscape more than a century earlier—in particular Timothy O’Sullivan—is drawn out in this re-edited and substantially enlarged edition of the classic book.

“Because I had lost my way in the suburbs, I decided to try to rediscover some of the landforms that had impressed our forebears,” remembers Robert Adams. “Was there remaining in the geography a strength that might help sustain us as it had them?”

Ordering Information

This item is currently unavailable from photo-eye, however we have located copies for you to purchase immediately through Amazon or Amazon Marketplace . We will receive credit for these orders if you use our ordering system. We will also receive credit for any other purchases you make while on Amazon's site. Thank you for supporting photo-eye!

Order through Amazon (photo-eye gets credit)

Why Amazon?

Amazon Price: $96.55 ISBN 3958291686

Order through Amazon

Order through Amazon Marketplace (photo-eye gets credit)

Why Amazon Marketplace?
8 New from $96.55 2 Used from $90.00 2 Collectible from $165.00

Other recent books by Robert Adams

Our customers who bought this also purchased

Masonry OFF