Cruel and Tender: The Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph. 5 June - 7 September 2003

About | Visiting information | Artists | Video Interviews | Catalogue | Limited Edition Prints

Robert Adams
American, born 1937

Many of Adams’s photographs are studies of landscape around Denver, showing how its natural beauty has been scarred by human habitation. The series What We Bought: The New World (1970-4) reflects his shock, on returning to the area after several years, to see the expansion of polluted suburbia into this previously unspoilt area. Rather than revelling in the beauty of the American West, these black and white images draw our attention to telegraph poles, parking lots, shopping malls and advertisements.
 
Thomas Ruff
August Sander
Bernd and
Hilla Becher

Thomas Struth
Fazal Sheikh
Michael Schmidt
Robert Frank
Stephen Shore
Walker Evans
Nicholas Nixon
William Eggleston
  Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Robert Adams
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Lee Friedlander
Lewis Baltz
Paul Graham
Garry Winogrand
Andreas Gursky
Boris Mikhailov
Diane Arbus
Rineke Dijkstra
Martin Parr

Adams has stated:
‘The pictures record what we purchased, what we paid, and what we could not buy. They document a separation from ourselves, and in turn from the natural world that we professed to love.’

 
Tate Modern
Visiting Information
About Tate Modern
Explore Tate Modern
Collection Displays
Exhibitions
Future Exhibitions
Past Exhibitions
Events & Education
The Building
Tate Collection
Tate Learning
Tate Research