Why People Photograph by Robert Adams

Published July 1, 2023

I was doing design research for a publication I’m working on and came across this lovely humble book. It appears that the entire book – titles, headers, subheads, text blocks, captions, and page numbers – are typeset in one typeface, in one weight: ITC Novarese Book (+ Book Italic).

The book was first published by Aperture in 1994. It was reprinted in 2004 and 2005, using the same typography. Book and jacket design by Wendy Byrne, with composition by Jenny Ma-Tay Isaacs.

From the inner flap:

Why People Photograph is a book by a professional photographer about the relationship of art and life. In 1981 Robert Adams published a volume of essays entitled Beauty in Photography, in which he suggested that art is too important to confuse with interior decoration or an investment opportunity. Its real use, he contended, is to affirm meaning and thus “to keep intact an affection for life.” Why People Photograph gathers a selection of Adams's writing since then. His subjects vary, but again he questions accepted prejudice, this time not only the view that art is trivial but that artists are separate. He demonstrates that many understand themselves to be bound to the world by complex and important obligations. Adams’s writing is free of academic jargon. Readers will also appreciate his attention to common experience the talks about trying to earn an income), his enjoyment of the unorthodox one essay concerns dogs and photography). and above all his conviction that art matters, Photographers “may or may not make a living by photography,” he writes, “but they are alive by it.”