Lewis Baltz was a visual photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s.

His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz’s images describe the architecture of the human landscape. His pictures are the reflection of control and power that human beings have. Like his contemporaries Robert Adams and Stephen Shore, Baltz focused his camera on architecture of tract housing, office parking lots and industrial parks.

Lewis Baltz documents the changing American landscape of the 1970s in his series, “New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California”. The project’s 51 pictures depict structural details, walls at mid distance, offices and parking lots of industrial parks. Contrast and geometry are important in these pictures, but what makes them consistent is Baltz’s attention to surface texture and lifeless subject matter.