Beauty - as simple as that

Photographer Robert Adams' latest exhibition at the Douglas Hyde gallery charts the uneasy relationship between man and nature. By Billy Leahy

As one of the most renowned American landscape photographers, revered for his portrayal of the American west and in particular the area around Denver in Colorado, a certain amount of expectation travels with Robert Adams.

For over 30 of his 40 years as a self-taught photographer, he has documented and traced the encroachment of urban life on the plains of rural America, his images depicting an uneasy, if not dysfunctional, relationship. These are photos with more than a hint of survey and documentation about them, but with so much more lying at their core.

In his current exhibition, Pine Valley, at the Douglas Hyde gallery in Dublin, Adams has turned his attention to an area not far from Hell's Canyon in Oregon where cottonwoods and fruit trees have grown on a region previously stripped bare by deforestation. The series marks a rediscovery for Adams of his initial inspiration. He has commented, "In the high desert light, the new trees reminded me of what originally brought me to photography – beauty... as simple as that."

Given his previous body of work, it is forgivable to expect the neatly-framed, small-scale photographs to contain vast swathes of open landscape or plains roaring virtually uninterrupted into the distance, broken perhaps by a single manmade feature. But somewhat disconcertingly in Pine Valley, nature is upon us; but have we moved to it, or has it ambled and clawed towards us? The answer is unclear given the deforestation/regeneration trade-off, but for certain the result is surprisingly claustrophobic, yet beautiful.

The desert light that Adams refers to performs a fundamental role in the work and in the creation of this silent beauty. Light has always been a crucial player in Adams' photographs and it is no different in this body of work where the shiny bright greys morph to silver and then into white, with the flood of light injecting the images with a quasi-translucent character. The patterns of the foreground and the woodlands gain in importance as any substantial light contrast is deliberately removed. The lack of colour adds a certain solemnity to the work, with the rustle of the trees silenced by this blanche blanket.

With nature so close to the camera in the Pine Valley series, there is a subtle hint at confrontation – something brought to the fore by the sporadic reoccurrence of a fence throughout. This seems to ask the question: are we holding nature back or are we restricting our own involvement with the landscape? The fence is never highlighted or pushed into central stage. But it is there: it registers a presence and begins to reoccur.

This simple device to keep out, keep in or to protect achieves a slightly sinister edge – at times it appears to want to go unnoticed. The proximity of the woodlands and the foliage to the camera lens adds an uneasy air of physical restriction. But is this a confrontation? Certainly the images seem too calm, too at ease, for this to be the case in any kind of aggressive manner.

However, the interaction between the viewer, who seems to assume the human role within the scenario of photographs, and the landscape is in question here. In some scenes the grass appears trampled; a first encroachment towards a renascent nature, perhaps, while in others branches are broken or damaged, with the reason left unknown. These small details are captivating within the general banality of the scenes and repetition of subject matter.

Elsewhere, the night photographs tucked away in a downstairs cove in the Douglas Hyde gallery almost seem superfluous and unnecessary given the strength of the daylight shots. But their stunning personality – they are regular photographs but look like solarised versions of the main body of work – merely adds to the exhibition.