"TURNING BACK" par Robert ADAMS. Editions Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Matthew Mark Gallery, New York & Walter König, Köln. 2005. Imprimé en Italie. in-4, couverture toilée beige sous jaquette photo. 172 pages. Texte en anglais, illustré de 162 reproductions photographiques noir & blanc, hors texte, par Robert Adams. Ouvrage réalisé dans le cadre de l'exposition au Haust der Kunst, Munich, du 29 Juin au 25 Septembre 2005 et au Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, du 29 Septembre 2005 au 03 Janvier 2006.

 

"Two hundred years ago Lewis and Clark reported finding in the American Northwest a vast forest of ancient evergreens. ln Turning Back Robert Adams looks again at the region's trees, discovering evidence both of America's failure and of a continuing promise. This book is an invitation to share in a kind of pioneering, in a search for a better home. If the journey is hard it is because we must traverse a landscape that we have ransacked. If we find the courage to keep looking it is because we ultimately encounter a mystery that is durable, a glory as serene as the ocean's horizon. President Jefferson's primary charge to Lewis and Clark was to prepare the way for American commerce. They tried to do this, as well as make money for themselves. Historians still speculate about why, upon his return, Lewis lapsed into depression and apparently committed suicide. "Going east," Adams suggests, "was more difficult than going west." What is the future? Turning Back documents two kinds of predictive evidence. On the one hand we observe the results of greed so unrestrained that they are indistinguishable from those of nihilism. On the Other we see what still lives unharmed, whether by our design or neglect or Providence; in these pictures the tone is celebratory, as in a prayer book."

 

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