The image above in one of my own and a response to the new topographers and their love of signs, a lot of my pictures were taken in India and are as such a “New Topography of India” rather then a new topography of America or Europe.
An exhibition called “New topographic: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was the exhibition that gave this style of landscape photography its name.
The exhibition was a key moment in landscape photography and was held at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY) in January 1975.
The exhibition has had a lasting effect on the whole medium and genre of landscape photography globally.
Since 1975 “New Topographics” photographers such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, and Stephen Shore have had a huge influence on landscape photography.
The pictures are stripped of artistic frills and reduced to a topographic image, carrying substantial amounts of visual information (often taken using a large format camera) but avoiding the inclusion of beauty, emotion or opinion.
I see in these pictures incredible purity a dry sense of humour and a disregard for the importance of the images. The images were sometimes displayed in a grid with titles such as “anonymous sculptures”.
There is no romantic notion of our world displayed by the New Topographic Photographers they instead take a joy displaying our world as it is, as it is changing rather than how it is timeless. Featuring man made structures that are new and obsolete where the attempted lack style and dead pan nature of the image (which is in itself a style) is used with careful composition to turn everyday landscapes into works of conceptual art.
Robert Adams Photographs
Analysis of two Robert Adams Images.
Robert Adams – Eden, Colorado, 1968
Shown above is a famous Robert Adams image I love the vintage feel of this image the high contrast and the saturated blacks and white made this picture appeal to me. It is simple but the composition is perfect the extreme grey scale that is shown in the building the dark edges of the building against the whitest sky opposite to the dark ground and white gas stations, make this image also seem otherworldly. I like the artificial light and sign age shown.
Robert Adams – Eden, Colorado, 1968
In the image above i have over painted to show areas of interest. The red lines are where the image lines sit along the thirds. The blue lines show the uprights and horizontal lines the sit in the middle of the composition. The orange areas are the areas of intense white and the green are areas of intense black.
You can see how well balanced the image is here how the black and the white sit opposite each other and how balanced the picture is from left to right
Robert Adams (born May 8, 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through the book The New West (1974) and the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975).
I enjoy his love of signs, gasoline stations and artificial light.
More Robert Adams Photographs
In his written introduction to one of his famous photographic books called “Prairie”, written in 1978, Robert Adams hints at what his photography is about “There is everywhere silence – a silence in thunder, in wind, in the call of doves, even a silence in the closing of a a pick-up door. If you are crossing the plains, leave the interstate and find a back road on which to walk; listen.” In his photographs you can feel this silence being conveyed. The picture of the an standing next to the huge tree stump is a great change from the romantic pictures of Ansel Adams where such an image would be unacceptable.
Lewis Baltz Photographs
Lewis Baltz’s work searches for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz images describe the architecture of the human landscape, offices, windows, walls, factories, and parking lots. His minimalistic photographs are stunning in their composition and simplicity. In 1974 he famously produced a book describing the anonymity new industrialization of California in his book “The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California (1974).
His composition and eye for detail in the everyday, produce some of my favourite images. The use of reflection and the straight on dead pan view of the world containing squares within squares is reproduced below.
More Lewis Baltz Photographs
I love the way Lewis Baltz takes the mundane and creates a masterpiece of composition and texture taking an everyday view and turning it into sublime caricature of our world by using careful attention to detail and an exceptional eye for composition.
Wrecked Shaw
My Photograph above is taken of a wrecked rickshaw in Pune India I have used Photoshop to adjust the levels make it black and white and add a thin black border and a vignette.
Roof Water Action
A water tank on a roof In Pune I like the shapes and lines and different textures.
Dining Room Panchgany
An empty truck drivers dining area in Panchgany India I like the textures and shapes here.
Pylon
A pylon on a hill in Mahableshwar in India the way the metal sits in the middle of the trees caught my eye.
Connections
A homage to Robert Adams love of signs, the fact that this 3G sign is wired up so badly caught my eye. Also as it was taken at night it has a certain quality of light that catches my imagination.
Star Room Door
The half closed door to a shop, this shop is closing and the sign will eventually say something else and not “Star”.
Tel Aviv Never Sleeps
Straight on artificial light the decrepitude of modern society in a city with all its bright colours and promises of freshness and nature from a can.
London
Here I have kept this image colour it is a view from near the entrance to the Tate Modern. I like the way the shapes and colours interact in the image, the way that perspective is tricked and how the lamp post frames the cranes. In the Style of Robert Adams but in colour and he mostly shot in black and white.
Watford Junction
Early morning Watford Junction I like the flatness of the light the way the overhead beams frame the shot and how it bends off into the distance. Another homage to Robert Adams.
Key Elements
I am not sure where this sits in this genre but is is part of my experimentation with colour and trying to apply it to the new topographic style of photography. More in the style of lewis Baltz as it is straight on a chosen part of a landscape.
Danger Caged Crane
Another dead pan shot of a crane this time through a warning window on a building site in London. This image is a combination of both Balstz and Adams as it is both a chosen part and a sign a square within a square and it contains industry.
London Pride
An experiment with window reflection and shooting as straight on as possible in a London street. Using colour again rather than black and white.
St Helier
Taken in the early morning in St Helier just before the Jubilee, I have left the colour balance like this as I fell it reflects more closely what St Helier actually looks like at night with the dustbin in the middle of the picture throwing its shadow towards the viewer I have put this shot slightly on an angle to reflect the deterioration of St Helier and take away some of its grandeur.
The Watersplash
Trying to take something I see often and look at it in a different way to create something new using composition and light. Using the door frame, sea and waves, netting and table to create the many vertical and horizontal lines.
Bath Street
Boxes in boxes the old being repaired, papered out windows and granite steps growing mould such is the mundane nature of St Helier. These two doorways being the same with one being the front of a house in the middle of being restored caught my eye. The overcast day made the light nice and flat.
The New Park
This picture is straight out of the camera and not edited as a homage to the intention to remove stylistic elements from pictures by the new topographic movement. The hard light with shadows i the foreground and the clouds in the sky help make this an interesting picture.
I like the way the new topography uses hard light and I have experimented with hard light in my pictures. The way the new topography cuts up the landscape appeals to me although it has been hard to get the composition anywhere near as good as anyone of The New Topographers.
The fact that we nearly all live in the urban man made environment rather than the romantic landscapes of Adams makes all the New Topographic images somewhat familiar. We have seen these things before but not really looked at them like this. Ansel Adams had to go off into the remote areas of Americas natural parks to get his pictures, Robert Adams and lewis Baltz only had to look around where they lived for inspiration.
The more you look the more you see is never more true then of this genre, I have also made the mistake of putting too much style into my pictures, especially the colour ones and holding on to an element of romanticism even when taking photographs of cranes.
I have found it difficult to shoot and process my pictures without imposing a style to them and the new topographics have a style of no style.
My most successful pictures were taken in London on a sunny day and were of cranes and the train station in Watford. It is difficult for me to have the confidence to let my pictures stand up with minimal editing barren of style as just a picture and this is something I will develop.
It is the very detailed crisp nature of the photographs in the new topography style which leaves no margin for error in composition or focus which is lacking in my pictures. In future i will have to learn to be more restrained with my Photoshop editing and stop when just enough has been done.