Hasta La Ideas

Robert Adams is the winner of the 29th Hasselblad Foundation Award in Photography, an international prize that recognizes major achievements in photography. Adams was presented with a gold medal and a check for 500,000 Swedish kroner (approximately $60,000) at a ceremony at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco on Tuesday. Past winners of the Hasselblad photography award include Nan Goldin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Malick Sidibé, Irving Penn, and Ansel Adams.

Known for his black-and-white images that capture the evolving American West, Oregon-based Adams, 72, has an extraordinary range: think Timothy O’Sullivan meets Lee Friedlander. Rare is the photographer who can manage to inject a tilt-a-wheel with the majesty of an ancient sitka spruce. “Precise and undramatic, Adams’ accumulative vision of the West now stands as a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment, while consistently recognizing signs of human aspiration and elements of hope across a particular changing landscape,” noted the Hasselblad Foundation in its award citation. An exhibition of his work will open at the Göteborg Art Museum’s Hasselblad Center on November 6. In the meantime, Adams is keeping busy. “We’re working on a little book called Sea Stories,” he said at a press conference held yesterday morning. “The pictures are of nature—the forest and migrating shore birds.”

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