Summer Nights, Walking
Robert Adams
I like to walk. To empty my mind of anything and everything. But walking in the dark, after sunset, is eery. To be utterly alone and at the same time surrounded by thousands of invisible people. The emptiness in your mind will be slowly replaced by dark thoughts of lurking danger. In the pictures in Summer Nights, Walking we hardly see anyone. But their presence is visible by a switched on light bulb, by a car parked in the drive way, a crumpled newspaper left on the sidewalk.
In the mid-1970s, Robert Adams began recording nocturnal scenes near his former home in Longmont, Colorado. Illuminated by moonlight and streetlamp, suburban houses, roads, sidewalks and fields seemed transfigured. All one can feel is alone, a voyeur view into your own walk and into the things of night. From dusk to the dark of the night we are taken and beauty becomes one with the stillness. The beauty is undeniable and the danger in the shadows and the anxiety of the dark, also undeniable.
Robert Adams (born 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. In this book he shows the changing landscape on a summer night.
The first version of this book was published in 1985 as Summer Nights. In 2009 he decided to revisit his project. Amending its title to Summer Nights, Walking and completely re-editing its contents to create a more disquieting and thus more accurate reflection of his experience.
Hailed as a new classic, Summer Nights, Walking went out of print soon after it was published in 2009. This new edition makes this revered body of work available to a new audience. A square little gem.
Summer Nights, Walking
Photographer: Robert Adams
Originally published in 1985 as Summer Nights
Republished in 2023 by Steidl
Hardback, clothbound, 25,4 x 25,7 cm, 84 pages, 69 images
Considered as one of the greatest photobooks of all time by Source Magazine.