‘Edward Thomas, a country poet, observed that people and trees are imperfect friends’ – Robert Adams

Through his stark portrayal of human development in the Western United States, Robert Adams comments on the imperfect and often destructive relationship between man and nature. The present lot, Sitka Spruce, serves as the cover image to Adams’ 2005 'photographic journal of re-exploration', Turning Back, a work that delves into man’s infringement upon nature by juxtaposing images of demolished forests alongside images of nature’s residual tenacity. The runic subject of Sitka Spruce is an ancient and enormous being that lives to be over 800 years old and grows over 200 feet tall—a true totem of nature’s unyielding resiliency. A dense multitude of battered branches seem to expel any unwanted intrusion in Adams’ discreet composition.

The spruce exudes an air of sentience, a wary and wizened sensibility the comes from a life that began before industrial forestry and subsequently bore witness to years of demolition. Adams’ photographs contemplate what it must have been like to occupy these forest prior to the age of machines: ‘When the pioneers who settled in the forest went to town for supplies they spoke of going outside. It is still possible to sense, in a few parks, a little of what it might have been like to live in the ancient woods, to be inside.’ (Adams, Turning Back, n.p.)