What Was It?
“What I remember most clearly was that nobody liked it”Frank Gohlke, one of the participating photographers told the LA Times when the exhibition was re staged last year.
‘New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’ was an exhibition that showcased a key moment in American Landscape photography. Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted in the same way that early photographers would document the natural landscape- this caused many people to turn their heads on this exhibition. The show consisted of 168 rigorously formal, black-and-white prints and when taken collectively, they seemed to posit an aesthetic of the banal.
Robert Adams – Artist Research
Born on the 8th May 1937, Robert Adams is a photographer from America specializing in the landscapes of West America. Adams’s documentation of contemporary western landscapes reveals the environmental damage caused by the suburbanization of such cities as Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Salt Lake City, as well as by the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology in those areas. 
Contact Sheets
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Analysis Of Photograph
Technical
This is my favourite photograph by Robert Adams, the image portrays a fairground ride illuminated by bright lights. The photo was taken during the evening as the sky was getting darker. Since all of the image is in focus I can assume that Robert Adams used a high aperture of F/22+, he most likely increased the exposure to achieve the soft glow from the lights. Due to the black & white feature of the photograph I cannot comment on the white balance or colour composition of the image but due to the vast range of grays it can be implied that the colours created chaos and in that sense, the black and white aspect was able to create a calm and serene atmosphere.
Visual
Referring to Ansel Adam’s tonal system, the image has the brightest white (#ffffff) but lacks the darkest black, despite this, it still contains a wide range of grays. The composition of the photograph is very successful, the ferris wheel isn’t in the direct center of the image, in fact, the top half of the image is incredibly plain and predominately one colour. This, however, doesn’t in any way serve as a disadvantage to the photograph. Naturally, the eye is drawn to the center of the ferris wheel; then to the bright lights and finally to the looming clouds.
Contexual
The name of the image is ‘Longmont, Colorado’ taken from the series ‘Summer Nights’. The image was taken roughly around 1982 (but printed in 1989).
For about five years, beginning in 1974, Adams embarked on an experiment, he made a series of photographs at night, the opposite of the high-altitude daylight used in most of his previous photographs. The project brought an element of risk he had not experienced before. In this photograph, Adams isolates the ferris wheel lights against a threatening sky to create a scene both delightful and ominous.