Review: Robert Adams: Beauty in photography

My opinion very early on into the reading of this essay is that it is very striking and meaningful, Robert Adams certainly raises a lot of awareness and questions when it comes to debating what truly is beauty in photography. At the beginning, I was immediately drawn to his comments on the goal of art being ‘beauty’ and questions how do we actually judge this? Backing his view up with an enlightening discussion on ‘Form’ and how form is something we all as photographers/artists experience but don’t necessarily pay enough attention to it.

In a way, I would say Adams challenged his point with referencing work from Edward Weston and his piece on bell peppers and how the subjects were limited yet Weston makes it unlimited with exceptional use of form. What also stood out for me was Adams discussion on how deception is necessary if the goal of art (Beauty) is to be reached and also says “Only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace (natural)”

Towards the end of the essay, Adams concludes with beauty being linked unavoidably to belief, from my perspective, I would say this suggests that beauty is all down to how we perceive an image as an individual, you are your own eyes and opinion, beauty can be defined differently to everyone.

 

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