Summer night, Colorado

This evocative photograph of a fairground in Longmont, California, is one of an important series of thirty-eight night landscapes taken by Robert Adams along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the late 1970s. The sequence led outward from urban areas, chiefly Denver, to the rural plains and mountains, placing what remained of nature in the cities into to a larger, natural context. Adams found photographing his subject-matter at twilight - a time of neglected peace - particularly seductive. Through the photographer's eyes, the fairground scene, brilliantly lit but still empty of crowds, becomes something contemplative and magical.