Skogen

Skogen is the Swedish word for forest, and while the dense woods featured in Robert Adams´s most recent series of photographs grow near his home in Oregon, the pictures evoke a wild utopia, and convey a hushed, primeval awe. In this volume, the latest to document Adams´s ongoing quest to find form amid the chaos of nature, shadows predominate, tempered by an ambiguous light that is unique to the Pacific Northwest. Skogen features forty-six previously unpublished images, a body of work that is among the most pictorially complex of Adams´s distinguished career. Also included are an introduction by the artist and a poem by the acclaimed poet Denise Levertov. This pairing is meaningful; as Michael Fried wrote in Bookforum, "Adams´s artistic ideal...has much in common with that of a certain sort of lyric poem, one that similarly has not the slightest room for carelessness of any sort.