Urban landscapes today feature spaces that focus on preserving natural resources while creating environments that are inviting to human and wildlife populations. This is especially important in this time of global change. Urban landscapes must be designed to meet the needs of today and the growth of tomorrow.
TYPOLOGIES
A photographic typology is a study of “types”. That is, a photographic series that prioritizes “collecting” rather than stand-alone images. It’s a powerful method of photography that can be used to reshape the way we perceive the world around us.
One of the first photographic topological studies was by the German photographer August Sander, whose project ‘People of the 20th Century’ (40,000 negatives were destroyed during WWII and in a fire) produced volume of portraits entitled ‘The Face of Our Time’ in 1929. Sander categorized his portraits according to their profession and social class.
The term “typology” however, was first used in 1959 when Bernd and Hilla Becher began documenting their architectural photographic series. Depicting decaying urban landscapes, each photograph was taken at exactly the same angle, from the same distance, with the same exposure settings. With the aim of recording a landscape in flux, the Becher couple described their subjects as “buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style”.
NEW TOPOGRAPHICS
New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.
This term would later go on to be a type of landscape photography under the category of urban photography as it explores as it captures human development and expanding urban landscapes showing scale and detail about cities and populated areas.
Some of the photos above show natural landscape behind the urban man-made structures which shows contrast in man/nature, often showing that mankind is expanding too fast and destroying the Natural Landscapes. This shift from Natural Landscape Photography to Urban Landscapes showing natural elements (Natural Landscapes in the background) shows how over time the world has and could well become more/overly urbanized if little is done to slow or halt man from expanding cities and urban areas across the many beautiful Natural Landscapes that Photographers like Ansel Adams captured so greatly. These images als show a juxtaposition because of the ordinary everyday architecture that is placed in amazing beautiful scenery. This could be controversial because of the personal perception of the images.