Alkali Lake, Albany County, Wyoming
1977
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 22.8 × 28.5 cm (9 × 11 1/4 in.) sheet: 27.7 × 35.4 cm (10 7/8 × 13 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Lou and Di Stovall
Accession Number
2018.194.1
Art Historical Context
Robert Adams's *Alkali Lake, Albany County, Wyoming* (1977) captures the stark beauty and subtle transformations of the American West through a gelatin silver print, a classic black-and-white photographic medium prized for its rich tonal gradations and fine detail. Measuring nearly 23 × 29 cm, this image depicts the desolate expanse of an alkali lake in Wyoming's Albany County—a saline, often barren landscape shaped by natural aridity and human activity. Adams, a pioneering figure in the New Topographics movement of the 1970s, approached such scenes with a detached, objective eye, eschewing ro...
About the Artist
Robert Adams · 1900–1900
Robert Adams, born Robert Hickman Adams on May 8, 1937, in Orange, New Jersey, grew up amid frequent relocations that shaped his deep affinity for the American landscape—from New Jersey to Madison, Wisconsin, and finally to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, in 1952.) Contracting polio at age 12, he recovered but retained a sensitivity to the environment that fueled his later work. After earning a B.A. in Eng...