Beauty in Photography

The eight essays in Beauty in Photography provide a critical appreciation of photography by one of its foremost proponents. The result is a rare book of criticism, alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true visual exploration.

Robert Adams Born in Orange, New Jersey in 1937, Robert Adams earned a doctorate degree in English from the University of Southern California. Before becoming a photographer he worked for eight years as a college English professor. His photographs, most of which record the development of the modern American West, have been widely collected, exhibited, reproduced, and honored, earning him two awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Charles Pratt Memorial Award in 1987. Among Robert Adams's many writings and monographs are those published by Aperture: From the Missouri West (1980), Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values (1981), Our Lives and Our Children (1983), Summer Nights (1985), Los Angeles Spring (1986), and Perfect Times, Perfect Places (1988). Adams's work has been exhibited by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, and the Colorado History Museum, Denver.