Robert Adams’s succinct preface to his 2010 book of photographs “What Can We Believe Where?” begins with uplift: “In common with many photographers,” he writes, “I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world.” Adams’s aim was true. Look at one of his photographs and you’ll see a record of mystery and beauty. The photographic elements are simple. Bright sunlight, generally; crisp shadow; the occasional moody nocturne. We feel as if we are being taught to see with a visual primer. Better yet, turn the pages of one of his books (he has made more than 50) or walk around an exhibition of his work, inhabiting the flow of his decisions. You are likely to feel your breath getting calmer and your senses quietened.

Adams, who turned 81 this year, has for decades taken the landscape of the American West as his main subject. His photographs depict highways, forests, mountain ranges, streets and homes in black and white; well, not really “in black and white” but rather in an alluring range of grays, from the brightest to the deepest. His stylistic voice is understated, just above audible. Take one of his most celebrated photographs, used on the cover of “What Can We Believe Where?” It is a view of a road in Larimer County, Colo., in 1977. The road goes from the bottom left of the picture plane to its right, narrowing to infinity. We see the slate gray surface of the road, its off-white markings, a line of fence posts, a low mountain range in the distance and a charcoal gray shadow, perhaps a tree’s, falling across the lower third of the picture. The photograph is full of promise: an open road, freedom from obligations, the companionship of a clear sky. It’s almost too simple, like a traveler’s snapshot. But the care with which it has been made — the fine grain and subtle printing — suggests that something more is there. Possibly this is what Adams means by “untranslatable mystery”: not merely that the world is mysterious but that a photograph can be, too, not as a translation but as a new statement, faithful to its own form.