Axisweb Selects: Mark Adams

Mark Adams, Condemned Tower Block, Ancoats, Manchester, England, 2011

We select photographer Mark Adams for our regular Axisweb Selects slot on CreativeTourist


Mark Adams’ photographs have a quiet, undemonstrative quality. He doesn’t dramatise his subjects or impose his own emotional response. Narrative and human incident appear to be absent altogether.

Yet, in a strange way, there is a lot going on. Adams records how landscape is slowly marked and changed by social and economic “progress”, from the upheavals of the industrial revolution to more recent experiments in urban regeneration. His work explores the relationship between landscape photography and broader social issues, such as urban regeneration, surveillance and the environment. With the sharp eye of the “flâneur”, he notices the details, subtleties and incongruities it would be easy to overlook in the normal course of everyday life.

Adams works across a range of formats and film types, each with its own physical characteristics and chromatic range. Colour and composition are very important to him; these are ways of questioning the romantic notions that have been attached to landscape. He draws inspiration not just from other photographers, but also from such film-makers and artists as Patrick Keiller, Ian Sinclair, Robert Bechtle and Edward Hopper.

Over the years Adams has taken hundreds of street photographs in England, Europe and North America. His most recent project, an exploration of the inland waterways of England, involved navigating and photographing canals, rivers, streams and coastlines in the north west. His work is understated and intriguing – and well worth keeping an eye on.

See more of Mark Adams work below.

  • Mark Adams

    Mark Adams, 52° 20' 6.2772'' N / 2° 16' 48.6408'' W / 21.514 m, 2013

    52° 20' 6.2772'' N / 2° 16' 48.6408'' W / 21.514 m, 2013

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  • Mark Adams

    Mark Adams, 53° 42' 13.0896'' N / 2° 6' 30.8916'' W / 145.95 m, 2015

    53° 42' 13.0896'' N / 2° 6' 30.8916'' W / 145.95 m, 2015

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  • Mark Adams

    Mark Adams, 53° 39' 46.9440” N / 2° 4' 47.5716” W, 2012

    53° 39' 46.9440” N / 2° 4' 47.5716” W, 2012

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  • Mark Adams

    Mark Adams, Boy On Bike, Greenquarter, Manchester, England, 2009

    Boy On Bike, Greenquarter, Manchester, England, 2009

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  • Mark Adams

    Mark Adams, Land Development Site #4, Galveston, Texas, USA, 2015

    Land Development Site #4, Galveston, Texas, USA, 2015

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May 2014


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