Lewis Baltz was born in Newport Beach, California, on 12th September 1945. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, and received an MFA from the Claremont Graduate School in 1971 which he then worked as a freelance photographer in California to then he taught photography at various institutions such as the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Yale, the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Art Academy of Helsinki. Baltz was a visual artist and photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement during the late 1970s. He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, his work has been published in a number of books, presented in numerous exhibitions, and appeared in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 1973 and 1977 Lewis Baltz received National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Baltz has produced many projects on commission, among them The Nation’s Capital in Photographs for the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Near Reno for the Nevada State Arts Commission. Since the mid 1980s he has been based in Europe and travels extensively.

Image Analysis

In this image it shows a shallow tonal range as it focuses on the white tones rather than the black tones of the image except for the ground as it shows a black tone that is lightened.

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. Simply, new topographic images where known to be photographs of a man-altered landscape/urban landscapes. Examples below show some popular areas where these type of images can be found and where photo-shoots take place to capture urban landscapes…

More examples of New topographic images

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. – Tate.org

SOME KEY NEW TOPOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHERS

What was the new topographics a reaction to?

Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental. – The Guardian

This means that the New Topographics was a reaction to the urbanization of the natural landscape. Many images display the juxtaposition between the newly built towns and buildings and the untouched nature in the background that has not yet been built on or changed.

New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers. It was was an exhibition that symbolized a key moment in American landscape photography.

 The new topographics reactions were a reaction to the tyranny of the idealised landscape photography which emphasised the natural and the elemental.

New topographics was a term invented by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers whose photographs had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.

The exhibition brought together Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Henry Wessel. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact. Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape. The photographs in the new topographics was a reflection of both the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.

My shoot:

This is my response on the New topographics photo-shoots. I took these photos around Hautlieu and Highlands. I tried finding buildings that looked plain and similar to the ones in the new topographics.
I felt my images related well to the New topographics as my images where quite plain and ‘boring’ images. I tried to get the side of buildings and very square buildings to match the images of Lewis Baltz.