Robert Adams. Buildings in Colorado 1964-1980 / Rudolf Schwarz. Architecture and Photography

This two-volume publication examines the early work of photographer Robert Adams (born 1937) in relation to the German architect Rudolf Schwarz (1897-1961). In a previously unpublished text, Adams reveals a close connection between his photography and the European architect. In the 1960s, on his only European tour, Adams focused specifically on Rudolf Schwarz’s churches in Aachen and Cologne, which left a lasting mark on Adams and inspired his decision to become a photographer and his early choice of subject, the Denver suburbs. As Adams wrote, Schwarz’s buildings helped suggest to me, when I returned to America, that not just churches, but whole urban and suburban landscapes might be revealed as sacred if we brought to them a measure of the same passionate regard that Schwarz had brought to his specifically religious commissions.