The New West Trilogy by Robert Adams, First Editions, First Printings

The New West Trilogy by Robert Adams 

The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range, 1974 

Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area, 1977 

What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area 1970-1974, 1995 

First Editions, First Printings 

Exceptional Condition 

This is a very rare set of Robert Adams critically acclaimed “New West Trilogy” consisting of first edition, first printings of “The New West : Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range”, “Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area”, and “What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area 1970-1974”.  The trilogy is a comprehensive exploration and documentation of the rapidly developing landscape of the Denver metropolitan area from 1968 through 1974 and the victory of consumerism over our so-called love of nature and rugged individualism.  

The following are some of the accolades for the trilogy: 

From the Hasselblad Jury in awarding Robert Adams the 2009 Hasselblad award: “Robert Adams is one of the most important and influential
photographers of the last 40 years. During that time, he has worked almost exclusively in the American West, and, as photography has altered and fragmented, he has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of 19th-century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose.” Past Hasselblad Award winners include Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Richard Avedon, Sebastiao Salgado, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Ansel Adams.  

From the Yale University Press, “Adams has created a comprehensive document that was resolute in its avoidance of romantic notions of the American West and dispassionately honest about man’s despoliation of the land. These books demonstrate the artist at the height of his powers as a documentary photographer and a poetic sequencer of images.” 

From the New York Times, “The most literate and eloquent photographer of our time…(Adams refuses) to accept a simplistic view of the West as either a pristine, prelapsarian collection of natural wonders…or a land ripe for unlimited economic development.” 

From Aperture, “Objective and direct, Adams’s photographs unsentimentally depict a despoiled landscape washed in the intense Colorado sunlight….his work stands alongside Walker Evans’s American Photographs, Robert Frank’s The Americans, and Stephen Shore’s Uncom­mon Places in the pantheon of landmark projects on American culture and society." 

The following are the details on the three books: 

The New West: Landscapes Along the Colorado Front Range

First Edition, First Printing published by The Colorado Associated University Press in 1974. Containing 56 black and white photographs and measuring approximately 9” x 10”, the book is bound in brown cloth covered boards with a photographically illustrated dust jacket. The book is in FINE- condition with the name of the previous owner written in very small letters on the first free endpaper (please see photo below). The dust jacket is in Fine- condition with very minor wear to the covers and edges. Overall, this is an exceptional copy of one of the most important photobooks ever published.

Denver: A Photographic Survey of the Metropolitan Area 

First Edition, First Printing published by Colorado Associated University Press in cooperation with the State Historical Society of Colorado in 1977. Measuring approximately ”10.5 x 9” and containing 93 black and white photographs, the book is bound in photographically illustrated wrappers.  Both the book and wrappers are in FINE condition.  

What We Bought: The New World, Scenes from the Denver Metropolitan Area 1970-1974 

First Edition, First Printing published by Stiftung Niedersachen, Germany in 1995. Measuring approximately 9” x 8” and containing 193 black and white photographs, the book is bound in cloth boards in a photographically illustrated dust jacket. Both the book and dust jacket are in FINE condition with the dust jacket evidencing the typical dulling that accompanies this type of coated cover stock.  

Photographs of each of the books and some examples of photographs contained in the books appear below. Also included as photograph 3 is the first free endpaper from “The New West” mentioned above. Please note that although the photographs appear digitized as thumbnails, they are viewable in the photo viewer by clicking your mouse on the thumbnail.