«In this exquisitely produced book, the influential American photographer Robert Adams revisits the classic collection of nocturnal landscapes that he began making in the mid-1970s near his former home in Longmont, Colorado. Originally published by Aperture in 1985 as Summer Nights, this new edition has been carefully reedited and resequenced by the photographer, who has added 39 previously unpublished images. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, the houses, roads, sidewalks and fields in Summer Nights, Walking retain the wonder and stillness of the original edition, while adopting the artist's intention of a dreamy fluidity, befitting his nighttime perambulations. The extraordinary care taken with the new reproductions also registers Adams' attention to the subtleties of the night, and conveys his appeal to look again at places we might have dismissed as uninteresting. Adams observes, «What attracted me to the subjects at a new hour was the discovery then of a neglected peace»

«No one wants to be a prophet, if the job can be avoided. What you want to try to be is a psalmist.» Robert Adams Robert Adams began by photographing suburban landscapes along the edge of the Rocky Mountains. His goal was then, and remains, to acknowledge the disappearance of wilderness but also to discover a basis for affirmation. In the 1980s he went on to revisit semi-rural areas through which he had walked as a boy — landscapes no longer pristine but still notable for their quiet, space and light. The views in this book, none published before, record some of what he found compelling.»

These essays address us in the quiet voice of a working photographer, an artist and craftsman who has thought long and seriously about his endeavor, who has tested and questioned his own assumptions in the light of actual practice. The result is a rare book of criticism, one that is alive to the pleasure and mysteries of true exploration. Written over a ten-year period, and originally published in 1981, this timeless collection of writings now includes a new preface by the author. Robert Adams possesses the wit to avoid cant, dogma, and platitudes of the scholar that can deaden our responses to the lively business of art. His eight essays pose a host of questions about photography's place in the arts — and in our lives: How is photography art? By what standards are we to judge the success or failure of a photograph? His reflections are delicate, unusually calm, but they also carry the force of sure conviction, the passion of absolute dedication. Few visual artists are capable of articulating the subtle, potent wellsprings of their own creative achievement. Adams does so with extraordinary grace and power. This book offers not only an insight to the work of a distinguished photographer, but also an illuminating challenge and corrective to the usual pieties and pettiness of photography criticism today.

«No Small Journeys relates to a series of photographs of Denver and its suburbs near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, a version of which was published by Aperture under the title Our Lives and our Children in 1983. In recent years, Adams felt it was important to expand the project to emphasize the simple beauty and humanity that can be found in the seemingly improbable environments we have created for ourselves all across America. Rather than focus on some looming disaster, he composed this series as a testament to that unlikely and markedly human beauty, summing up his new reaction to the work with a quotation by Edward Dahlberg: «Homer sang of many sacred towns in Hellas which were no better than Kansas City».»