New Jersey, USA, 1937.
Adams was a professor of English literature for several years before turning his full attention to photography in the mid-1970s. Adams has also written a number of critical essays on the art of photography, including Beauty in Photography, Why People Photograph and most recently, Along Some Rivers. Among many awards, Adams has received the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation fellowships and in 2006, the Deutsche Börse Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, and in 2014 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In the fall of 2010, Yale University Art Gallery organized an ambitious, touring retrospective. The retrospective began in Vancouver, British Columbia and traveled to the Denver Art Museum, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Media Museum in the United Kingdom, and the Jeu de Paume, Paris. His works are included in major museum collections worldwide.