The New Topographics: photographs of a man altered landscape

The New Topographics was a term created by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz. Their pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. They brought a new perspective to landscape photography that focused on an objective documentation of locations.

These images of the man altered landscape carried a political message and reflected the growing unease about how the natural landscape was being eroded by industrial development and the spread of cities. Work labeled New Topographics emphasised the relationship between man and nature through the documentation of Industrial intrusions on land and scenes of suburban sprawls, motels and parking lots.

These New Topographic photographers were less concerned with portraying an ideal image of nature and were more interested in showing plainly how man has altered it. They were photographing against the tradition of nature photography.