The New Topographics are photographs of a man-altered landscape with the exhibition which includes the work of 10 photographers from the original show: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel. Inspired by The New Topographics my class decided to walk around the school and highlands college taking photos of the buildings and urban influenced building structures.
What is Landscape Photography?
Landscape photography shows spaces in the world, potentially vast and empty, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs capture the presence of nature but can also show man-made features engrossing on nature.
What is Rural Photography?
Rural Photography is similar to landscape photography but it captures life in the countryside and life living in a rural environment compared to an urban area.
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist. Adams was born on February 20th 1902 and died on April 22nd 1984. Some of Adams most influential and well known work was his black and white photos of the American West. Adams was one of the founders of a group known as Group f/64 which is an association of photographers who were responsible for photography that utilized sharp focus and the full tonal range.
Adams developed an exact system of image making known as the Zone System with his friend, Fred Archer. Archer was another aspiring photographer who was interested in portrait photography and before his death in 1963 took portrait photography of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the time.
The zone system was a method of understanding what tonal range was going to be captured when taking the photo. He knew what parts of the image would be the lightest and which would be the darkest. This helped him work out what the final image’s contrast would be like.
Ansel Adams Zone System
As you can see above, Ansel Adams used his Zone System to work out what tones would be represented in the different parts of the image and which would be darker or lighter. By doing this he made sure the images would all have a distinguishable contrast with dark and light and would create drama that would make his images so much better than other images taken at the time. The reason Ansel Adam’s images were so much better than others taken at the time is all to do with his reasoning behind taking the images. At first he took them without thinking about what he was actually taking and then he saw the image he wanted to take in his mind’s eye. He then experimented with exposures and used his zone system to see what his image would be like after he developed the image.
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and musical movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and was most commonly found from 1800 to 1850.
Photo-shoot plan
To take the photos for landscape, rural and romanticism I will photograph a beach in Jersey. I will photograph the waves, beach and rocks from different angles. I want to take photos like Ansel Adams and photograph water in motion and maybe in black and white to show the real tonal contrast between the brightest and darkest tones in the image.
Photo-shoot
Ansel Adams inspired edits
To get the images above, I went through my photos from the contact sheets and found the best ones. I then used Adobe Light room to edit the images in mass so that they all represented Ansel Adams’ work.
My Final Image
The reason I chose the image above as my best/ favourite image is that it reflects Ansel Adams ideas about the tonal system and how the contrast between dark and light brings power to the image. The image is of a rocky outcrop and I made it black and white and edited it so that the clouds to the left are darker and bring tonal contrast.
Edward Burtynsky, born in 1955, is a Canadian photographer widely recognised for his largely formatted industrial photography. Burtynsky’s work depicts natural locations of which are being vastly invaded by human industrialisation. His work is often compared to a unique depiction of the ‘sublime’ due to the extreme format of the over-head images. He formally studied graphic arts and photography between the 1970’s and 1980’s, and achieved a diploma in graphic arts and a BAA in photographic arts. Edward Burtynsky won the TED prize for Innovation and Global Thinking in 2005 and received the Governor General’s award in Visual and Media Arts for his collection of work so far.
This image produced by Edward Burtynsky in 2016 is titled: ‘Saw Mills #3, Log Booms, Lagos, Nigeria’. The title of the image removed any ambiguity to the viewer as the title describes exactly what is in the image. At first glance there is a strong focus on repetition and the use of lines, also the tones in the image appear very earthy and almost dull.
Although the lighter sections are very subtle in this image by Edward Burtynsky, they are still visible when you look closer into the image. The lighter areas can be seen in patches surrounding the sawmills, especially in the bottom third of the image. The lighting of the image seems natural as it subtly produces highlights and shadows. The shadows can be seen in the same positions as the shadows, as they weave between the sawmills, producing cloud-like areas. It is difficult to tell the time of day that the photograph has been taken, although the shadows are casted from the bottom right corner of the image, suggesting the light is also coming from this direction.
There is a strong emphasis on line in this photograph. these thin, vertical lines subvert into different directions, but overall lead the viewers eyes from the bottom to the top of the image. There is no particular leading lines in this photograph, though the multiple lines lead the viewers eyes in the same direction, in a curved motion.
Although there is no representation of echo or reflection within this image, there is a strong sense of repetition through the use of line. These thin lines curve in a snake-like motion from the bottom third of the image to the top third.
There is a contrasting combination of geometric and organic shapes in this photograph. This can be seen in the straight-edged lines being formed in a way that they appear as an organic, curved line.
This photograph has a shallow depth of field as the lines in the bottom third are in focus compared to the lines in the top third. The image consists mainly of positive space, although there is representation of negative space throughout the whole photo, which is seen in the murky waters between the sawmills.
There is not a strong focus on texture in this photograph, but the textures represented could be said to be contrasting as the water has a smooth, sleek surface when compared to the sharp-edged wood planks.
The tones in this photograph do not have an extensive range, however darker and lighter tones can be seen, for example shadows are found in between the wooden planks and sections of the water are slightly lighter, especially in the bottom third of the photograph,
The colour palette of the photograph is made up of complimentary earthy colours. These colours are subdued and subtle, and consist of greens and browns. Lighter, white colours can be seen up close within the wooden lines. If the image was taken in black and white film, the tones of the image would be accentuated, however I feel like the image would be more ominous to the viewer, as the colour of the wood would be removed.
The rule of thirds is somewhat used in the photo, as the bottom third of the image is in focus but the depth begins to fade as the viewers eyes travel up the image. There is no shape formations that can be superimposed onto this image as the composition is organic. Overall I would say the photograph is balanced as the positive and negative space are rather evenly distributed.
“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape“
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) whose photos had similar banal aesthetic, in that way they were formal, principally black and white prints of the urban landscape.
It was created to highlight the fact that the usual landscape photography which showed the beauty of nature without any human disruption was fake. So, photographers went out and started taking pictures of things that were man made with the usual natural landscape in it, just not as the main feature.It allowed people to understand that humans and nature can live in harmony, without destroying views etc.
In the 1970s, cars were being used by more people.As a result of this, more roads,car parks and petrol stations were being created which meant that fields were being covered with concrete which some people saw as an eyesore.
Frank Gohlke (born April 3, 1942) is an American landscape photographer. Gohlke′s photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Amon Carter Museum; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 1975, he was included in the influential exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, organized by the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House; the Canadian Center for Architecture; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Amon Carter Museum; and the Walker Art Center.
https://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/frank-gohlke
This image by Gohlke is a good example of New Topographics. The image includes the industrial side of Texas, however you can see a lightning bold in the top right hand corner of the image. Some could say that its nature reminding people it is still there. However, some could say that no matter what we put onto this earth, nature will almost always be present.