Robert Adams, Our Lives and Our Children

In 1983, Aperture published the première édition désormais épuisée of this série of photographs taken between 1979 and 1982 under the title Our Lives and Our Children, Photographs Taken Near The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. In 2003, the Matthew Marks Gallery à New York présente, in an exhibition and catalogue, a second part of présente under the name No Small Journeys, Across Shopping Center Parking Lots, Down City Streets. In 2018, réédition augmentée from Our Lives and Our Children at Éditions Steidl includes some of these photographs.

One day in the early 1970s, Robert Adams (born 1937) and his wife saw a column of smoke rising from their home over the Rocky Flats nuclear power plant near Denver, Colorado. For an hour, they saw the plume develop and felt helpless in the face of what appeared to be an ongoing nuclear accident. Finally, it was announced that the fire was burning outside the plant, but Adams decided to try to imagine what might be lost in a nuclear disaster.

He photographed in Denver and its suburbs; the individuals shown were near the Rocky Flats factory. The new Steidl edition of « Our Lives and Our Children » presents an expanded sequence that retains the powerful compactness of the first edition (out of print for nearly three decades).

May 16 to July 29, 2018
Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation
2 Impasse Lebouis, 75014 Paris