For 45 years, Adams has photographed the American west, its prairies, skies and rivers, its creeping suburbs, highways and malls. He has recorded the epic natural beauty and palpable silence, and the defilement of that beauty by industrialisation, consumerism and pollution. His vision is essentially humane and thus old-fashioned, and both his pictures and writing – he has published several illuminating books of essays – are characterised by a sense of purpose you do not much encounter in photography any more.

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