Adam Davies & Landscape Photography

By Daniela Sol

On a cold November night, photographers murmured in Studio #8, adorning light bulbs hung from the ceiling, and a crowd gathered to view the work of photographer Adam Davies.

Adam Davies is a well-known photographer from the Northeast. A former professor at Catholic University, Davies revisited Brookland this past Tuesday, November 13th to present his work in the Monroe Street Market Arts Walk. Davies received an Ed.M. from Harvard University and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and worked from 2010 to 2013 in the National Gallery of Art.

In honor of Photography Week in D.C., the Introduction to Photography class at CUA decided to take a field trip to see the artist’s work on photographing open spaces and landscapes. The pictures presented a collection of “places in the American landscape that are overlooked or marginalized”, Davies said, as he swirled in his seat going through slide by slide and presenting his work.

During his education, Davies explained how he was intrigued about how only artists from Europe and the past were studied and how he wished in his work to emphasize American talent and contemporary art. In his presentation, he showed various pictures depicting bridges, architecture, and open landscape spaces from various places in the Northeast and Texas. His style of photography is clean and crisp and he described in his expo how he preferred his pictures to be simple and unedited.

Davies explained how there were two types of photographers, ones that took lots of pictures of a spot and then edited to create one good picture or photographers like himself that scouted the place, prepped it, and took one good picture then and there. His photography style, which is very unusual for a photographer, is to not wait for the spontaneity of the moment with the camera in hand, but to walk with a notepad and take notes of places he found interesting. He explained how he came back to places a few more times to go through the process thoroughly before actually taking a picture.

“I like pictures that slightly disorient the viewer, creating an interior, dreamlike sense of time, and place,” Davies said.

He tends to photograph unusual spots of bridges, and one can see this “dreamlike” effect he refers to in the water. Davies, with his talented use of shutter speed, makes the water seem foggy and vapor-like.

“I think of my work as physiological portraits of places seen through the gaze of the 8×10 inch large-format camera,” Davies said.

His next artistic endeavor is to photograph graffiti and street art amongst spaces, which always beckons for the eye of the photographer. His favorite piece from his collections is the inside of a bridge’s arch that was painted with paintball splashes. This drove him to the interest of urban art. You can see Davies work on his website, https://www.adamdavies.net and any further expos and events coming up.