“I spent several years working along freeways,” Robert Adams says in his Oregon studio. Adams’ photographs range from scenic and picturesque to tattered and crumbling, describing the evolution of the Western landscape and revealing the unignorable and predominantly negative effects of humans.

Despite being typically devoid of human subjects, Adams’s photographs convey human presence through physical traces of life imposed on the natural landscape: a garbage-strewn roadside, a clear-cut forest, or a half-built house. However, Adams’ work also conveys a sense of hope that change can be effected to preserve the American West.