One of several posts I’ve been reading that have severely delayed me getting down to my own work this morning was Moving forward, looking back by Alec Soth on his Little Brown Mushroom blog. In it he takes a look at the book which most changed him as an artist in the past year.
His choice is ‘Prairie’ by Robert Adams, a small volume that came out in 1978 and was reissued with a different cover as “a new expanded edition” in 2011, with an essay by Eric Paddock and around a dozen extra pictures. At $35 it perhaps seems expensive for such a slim paperback volume, but it is described as “a future collector’s item.” The tritone reproductions are probably superior to the original clear and precise Rapaport printing, and although I can’t remember how much this cost me in 1978, the cheapest secondhand copy I found in a short online search was now $230.
If you don’t own the original, I’d certainly recommend buying the new, though as a volume that may expand your own horizons rather than an investment opportunity.
Soth homes on on the way that Adams uses repetition – and the three examples he gives are also in the original work, produced in conjunction with an exhibition at Denver Art Museum, although in the third pair the two images have changed places. Soth talks about “use of repetition to quietly investigate time and perception“, though I think in the third it is perhaps more about viewpoint.
‘Prairie’ was I think the third Adams books I bought back in the 70s, after the weightier ‘The New West‘ and ‘Denver‘ and I think in some ways one of my favourites. It’s smaller size and fewer pictures make it easier to get to know. But all were good investments, both in terms of my own work and their current value.