Landscape - David Emitt Adams

David Emitt Adams
Ground and Air - Landscape
Raven Mrozek


David Emitt Adams is a black and white photographer who combines the historical with the present in regards to both subject matter and technique. He is an emerging artist based in Tempe, Arizona but was born in Yuma, Arizona. Adams attended Bowling Green State University in New York for his BFA and received his MFA from Arizona State University. Adams work has been displayed in galleries both nationally and internationally; the SOHO Gallery in New York and The Studio in London. He has received multiple grants and awards. Most recently, the Lens Culture International Exposure award, Freestyle Crystal Apple award, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation travel grant. 



The series Conversations with History  is the most powerful of the pieces in regards to concept. This series addresses the habit in the American west of abandoning trash, including cans, on the desert landscape. Adams states that "the notion of land untouched by the hand of man is so foreign it might as well be make-believe." Adams researched western desert landscapes and compared the to images taken of the same sites  by his predecessor . This led to his awareness of the trails and traces the human hand leaves behind. Adams began collecting rusty debris from the floor of the dessert, transforming the cans' surfaces  into tintype images of ideal, untouch desert landscape. This creates a conversation between human activity and the landscape as it existed before habitation. 








36 Exposures is another series of Adams that I find interesting and timeless. This series discusses the history of photography by producing black and white tintypes of modern subjects. Adams stated on his website that "there is something truly democratizing in the portraits. The subjects look like they belong to this time and not." Tintype is a form of photography that produces a positive image on a thin sheet of metal coated with a darker lacquer. Adams specifically used 35 mm canisters to print on for his series 36 Exposures. Again, he creates a dialogue between photographic process, history and the present.