Words That Helped: Quotations Collected by the Photographer Robert Adams

A collection of quotations compiled by Robert Adams that have inspired his work and life for almost 60 years

This volume is a personal compilation of quotations that have played a vital role in orienting Robert Adams' life as a photographer. Copied down in private notebooks collected over six decades and now edited for the general reader, this meditative tapestry of words addresses the question: "What are the facts of our situation, and how might we respond?" From poets, novelists and songwriters to painters, photographers and more, the book features quotations from a revealing array of historical and contemporary figures including Diane Arbus, Ingmar Bergman, Paul Cézanne, Emily Dickinson, Dag Hammarskjöld, Dorothea Lange, Fran Lebowitz and Alfred Stieglitz. Adams has grouped these quotations into sections that correspond to the larger motifs in his oeuvre, such as "Walking," "Night" and "Long Views." Taken together, they suggest the lineaments of an autobiography, one aimed at helping others by means of lived experience recorded in words.
Robert Adams was born in 1937 in Orange, New Jersey. After earning a PhD in English literature and teaching the subject for several years at Colorado College, he became a photographer in the mid-1960s. Adams has published more than 40 books of photographs, with the changing landscape of the American West as his primary subject. His books with Steidl include Gone? (2009), The Place We Live (2013), From the Missouri West (2018), Los Angeles Spring (2023), Eden (2023) and Summer Nights, Walking (2023). Adams lives and works with his wife in northwest Oregon.