After almost a decade of photographing the landscapes and historical art and architecture of Colorado, especially its vernacular religious expressions, Adams turned a critical lens onto the rapidly expanding built environment of tract housing and highway infrastructure. His subtly eerie images provide visual analogue to the literary and political movements of the time that critiqued these ostensible manifestations of the American Dream.

In this image, an anonymous woman stands inside a house. Framed by the front window, interior doorframe, and back window, she seems like a specimen trapped between glass. Almost every element of the unadorned structure uses the same rectangular shape—a cold, mechanistic precision that is mirrored in the antiseptic landscaping and harsh light, completing the transformation of a straightforward and familiar scene into an uneasy portrait of suburban isolation and ennui.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)