“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography

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

An example;

 The new topographics was a reaction to the tyranny of idealized landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental. Each photographer was fascinated by the man-made elements of the world- such as car parks, warehouses and industries,etc.

The key features these photographs include are pristine or exceptional scenery found at national parks, they trained their cameras on the byproducts of postwar suburban expansion: freeways, gas stations, industrial parks, and tract homes.