Published by Hartmann Books in 2018, Hope is a risk that must be run is a booklet of 44 pages presenting 21 duotone illustrations. Robert Adams is the photographer, and Joshua Chuang wrote the text; the publication appears in English, French, and Dutch. It measures 14.8 by 21 centimeters and is issued as a thread-knotted brochure with a foil-stamped cover, designed by Nadine Engler.

The photographs were made in the 1970s, when Adams lived near Denver, Colorado. They show people in urban and suburban settings going about ordinary activities. The publisher connects this work to Adams’s response to a nearby nuclear weapons plant: the apparent fragility of everyday life becomes a reason to look carefully at his fellow citizens. Rather than offering a survey of his better-known landscape photographs, this small selection brings attention to his street photography. The book places daily routines alongside the possibility of catastrophe, leaving viewers to consider the value of the lives pictured. Its concise format brings twenty-one images together with Chuang’s accompanying text.