Reflecting on Photos

One of the exhibits I wanted to take in was Robert Adams'’ Landscapes of Harmony and Dissonance. Adams is a contemporary landscape photographer who has been taking stills of landscapes in Colorado, Oregon and California for over forty years. The pictures he snapped in Colorado were near my home town of Arvada - places like Longmont, Boulder, Table Top Mesa and Golden. This made me even more intrigued by the photographs.

Ok, boring stuff, right? Well, he takes pictures of the places where modern development meets nature. He is captures how humanity destroys nature to facilitate "progress." His work really captured my imagination and showed the contrasts in a striking manner. What was most interesting (and the reason I am writing this piece) was a quote from Robert Adams that the Getty Museum placed in one of the gallery rooms. The words were so powerful to me that I had to sit down on a bench and write them down. These words were Adams' own definition of what it means to be a photographer. I give them to you.

What a landscape photographer traditionally tries to do is to show what is past, present and future at once. You want ghosts, and the daily news and prophecy. (Robert Adams, 1980)

Again, you may be bored, yet this artist captures something of my view of speaking the word. Adam'’s pursues the world that is seen by "“not blinking" -– a snapshot of a moment in time that tell of the past (where nature has existed) of the present (where human development destroys) and of the future (places with less nature and more development).

I believe that a preacher is an artist who tries to express past, present and future all at one time. Words bring forth ghosts, news and prophecy into the conviction of the heart and into the conduct of life. Followers of Jesus are people with a definite past, a mysterious but assued future, and a way of living that is aware of each.

Today May your present living be a wise reflection of your past and a confident expression of what is future.