Robert Adams - What We Bought: The New World (VERY FRESH COPY, WITH DUSTJACKET) - 1995

THIS IS THE LAST EXCLUSIVE PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com in 2025 -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.

FANTASTIC, IMPORTANT PHOTOBOOK by Robert Adams ("The New West", 1974; "New Topographics", 1975) - here with his "Scenes From the Denver Metropolitan Area 1970-1974" (subtitle).

The Open Book, Hasselblad Center, pages 364/365.

TRUE FIRST PRINTING from 1995 (not to mix with the later reprint).

EXCELLENT, LIKE NEW AND UNREAD CONDITION.
COLLECTOR'S COPY.

Like always 5Uhr30.com guarantees detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance, and of course, combined shipping - worldwide.

Published in conjuction with the exhibition entlted "What We Bought. The New World. Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area", held in 1995 at "Sprengel Museum" in Hanover, Germany.

Robert Adams is famous for many great photobooks like:
- "The New West: Landscapes Along the Coloroda Front Range"
(Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol II, page 25; Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books, page 226-
227)
- "Eden"
("The Open Book, The Hasselblad Center, Stockholm, page 378/379)

5Uhr30.com says MANY THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT THIS YEAR -
making our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
Ecki Heuser & team are wishing ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS for 2026.

Stiftung Niedersachsen. Sprengel Museum, Hannover. 1995. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover with dustjacket. 233 x 205 mm. 204 pages. Photos: Robert Adams. Graphic design: Jörg Werner. Foreword by Robert Adams. Text in English and German.

Condition:
Book new, mint, unread. Dustjacket very fresh and complete with no tears, no taped tears, no missing parts; slightest trace of use, no remarkable defects. Overall near mint, near perfect condition.

Wonderful photobook - in wonderful fresh condition.

Robert Adams, born 1937, is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through his book The New West (1974) and his participation in the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the Hasselblad Award.
"Robert Hickman Adams was born on May 8, 1937, in Orange, New Jersey to Lois Hickman Adams and Ross Adams. In 1940 the family moved to Madison, New Jersey where his younger sister Carolyn was born. Then in 1947 they moved to Madison, Wisconsin for five years, where he contracted polio at age 12 in 1949 in his back, left arm, and hand but was able to recover. They moved one last time, in 1952, to Wheat Ridge, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, when his father secured a job in Denver. They moved to Colorado partly because of the chronic bronchial problems that he suffered from in Madison, New Jersey around age 5 as an attempt to help alleviate those problems. He continued to suffer from asthma and allergy problems.
During his childhood, Adams often accompanied his father on walks and hikes through the woods on Sunday afternoons. He also enjoyed playing baseball in open fields and working with his father on carpentry projects. He was an active Boy Scout, and was also active with the Methodist church that his family attended. He and his father made several raft trips through Dinosaur National Monument, and during his adolescent years he worked at boys' camps at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. He also took trips on pack horses and went mountain climbing. He and his sister began visiting Denver Art Museum. Adams also learned to like reading. In 1955, he hunted for the last time.
Adams enrolled in the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1955, and attended it for his first year, but decided to transfer the next year to the University of Redlands in California where he received his B.A. in English in 1959. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Southern California and received his PhD in English Literature, in 1965.
In 1960 while at Redlands, he met and married Kerstin Mornestam, a Swedish native, who shared the same interest in the arts and nature. Robert and Kerstin spent their first few summers together in Oregon along the coast, where they took long walks on the beach and spent their evenings reading.
In 1963 they moved back to Colorado, and Adams began teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. In 1963, Adams bought a 35 mm camera and began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. He soon read complete sets of Camera Work and Aperture at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He learned photographic technique from Myron Wood, a professional photographer who lived in Colorado. While finishing his dissertation, he began to photograph in 1964. In 1966, he began to teach only part-time to have more time to photograph. He met John Szarkowski, the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, on a trip to New York City in 1969. The museum later bought four of his prints. In 1970, he began working as a full-time photographer.
Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, said "his subject has been the American west: its vastness, its sparse beauty and its ecological fragility. [. . .] What he has photographed constantly – in varying shades of grey – is what has been lost and what remains" and that "his work's other great subtext" is silence."
(Wikipedia)