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.
Lewis Baltz
Frank Gohlke
Robert Adams
My shoot:
Lewis Baltz
My image
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.
Eugène Atget was a French photographer best known for his photographs of the architecture and streets of Paris. He took up photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters, architects, and stage designers. Atget began shooting Paris in 1898 using a large format view camera to capture the city in detail. Noted for his determination to document all of the street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization, most of his photographs were first published by Berenice Abbott after his death.
Cour du Dragon
Corner of rue de Seine and rue de l’Échaudé c. 1919 Arrowroot print Clark Art Institute, 1998.39.1
The building being photographed in the image above, is located on the intersection of Rue de Seine and Rue de l’Échaudé. This intersection is located in the sixth arrondissement of the city in the Saint-Germain des Prés neighborhood which is on the left bank, or Rive Gauche. The Rive Gauche is known for its high-end shopping and elegance, and the Saint Germain des Prés neighborhood is specifically known for its rich cultural history. When Atget photographed this building in 1924, the façade was pretty torn up. The exterior of the building appears to be falling apart with parts of the building literally peeling off and whole sections missing. Furthermore, the bottom half of the building is darker than the top half, and there are flyers plastered on the window. There also appears to be a larger poster placed above the window. There is a singular old-fashioned car/lorry on the left. When looking down the two roads on either side of the centre building, the further away it is, the lighter it gets. There are two possibilities of why this is, which is either that the image is over exposed and it looks this way because the sky was very bright OR the weather was bad and there was fog. Which ever side you pick may change your perception slightly. I think that it being fog suits the image well. Its black and white, the walls are worn down and the streets are empty- It adds to the gloomy vibe. It is unknown as to why Atget took all these photographs, but they became a big part of the history of Paris within photography. Looking at these photographs, I think he was trying to capture the essence of old Paris, trying to create the feeling of nostalgia. Perhaps he knew that the world around him was changing once again. In some of his photographs, maybe even claustrophobia- lots of tight spaces and dark alleyways. In this photograph specifically, there are many dark tones that gently splurge into lighter tones.
When I saw this old photograph of Atget’s, I instantly pictured some streets in jersey. I went into google maps and took a screenshot of what place in Jersey came to my head, which is the first picture below. I then started traveling around the area via google maps in search for similar places, or where I could potentially take photographs like the one above. However there are many places in jersey such as alleyways and tight areas where I could take photographs referring to the other work of Atget, but this search was only for the analysed image.
The new topographics was the turning point in history in 1975 which was a shift away from photographing traditional landscapes, to photograph of landscapes that are unromanticised, industrial urban landscapes. This movement of new landscape photography was made because of the fact that society wasn’t recognising the issues of how the world was being slowly decaying from the natural landscapes being altered to urban, man made buildings taking over, raising awareness of the issue that was on the uprise. The photographers that where involved in this movement where 10: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel.
As you can see from the image above, this photograph is perfect in terms of the explanation of the “new topographics”. This reasoning behind this is because in the image you can see how there are industrial images as the main focus when you look at the image, however, if you look in the surroundings of these images you can see that there is some natural scenery in the surroundings of these industrial landscape images. This is because the photographers that where apart of this movement tried to get across that if society carries on with having urban/industrial landscapes cover up the world, we wont be having many more natural landscapes or even beautiful scenery to appreciate from what the world has given us.
Plan
Where – photo shoot will be taken around oakfield sports center and highlands.
What – I will be taking some deadpan images of industrial buildings
When – I will be carrying out this photo shoot during the daytime at around 1pm.
How – These photos will be taken at head height with the camera facing starring onto the object that i will be taking pictures of with the setting’s being exposure/80 and IOS/400.
Why – I am taking these pictures in inspiration of the new topographic in taking my own pictures to do with this project.
Contact Sheet
Final Images
From my final images, i got them to look so appealing in the compositions of black and white through editing. The process I went through in editing the images where making them black and white, then i went ahead and changed the colours that where in the images originally to enhance some proportions of the images. For example, it is shown in my images that you can see some dirt and textures that are enhancing from the edit making them appealing.
Comparison
Frank Gohlke
My Image
In both images, the lighting used is petty much identical, Frank’s image was lighted by natural light coming from above and behind the two focal points of the image which is directly above the structures. I know this because it shown in the picture’s that there are shadows on the ground in front of the objects on the ground. In my image, I used an aperatu
It is the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect, for example, new and old, or dark and light.
The first photo I got from Societe Jersiaise, it was taken in 1870 – 1887, by Ernest Baudoux. The website features many photos and information about the history of Jersey.
The second photo I took at Plemont on the 24 February 2021, 10:51:08, as part of my Rural Landscape Project.
Photoshop Display
To create juxtaposition between the images I used Photoshop and overlay them, then align them so that you can see that they are the same image.
I darkened the edges of the image, by using a black brush at 75% opacity.
Overall, I think it shows that the images juxtapose each other, due to the black and white colours of the older image, and the vibrant colours of my image. This is due to the evolution and development of technology. Also the quality of the image in better and more clear.
Firstly, Godwin uses the path as a leading line to drag our eye to the natural mountain scenery. The horizon rests on the top horizontal line, demostrated by the rule of thirds.
The monochrome black and white filter exaggerates the intense clash in the harsh shadows cast by the mountains, that contrasts with the bright highlights of wild grass in the foreground,
The whites in the sky don’t blend with landscape which creates a border between the two elements. This adds an atmospheric and energised mood, due to the steep changes of tonal values, overall it helps contribute towards the dramatic overcast look Godwin was going for.
The mountains on the left gradually get lighter as they disappear into the distance. This gives the image more depth, as the structure of the mountains has less form, which makes you focus on the larger mountains as that is where all the crisp details are.
The Sun acts a the main natural light, which gives off genuine and complex shadows. The reflections in the reservoir also display that it is a bright day, the haze in the distance created due to clarity in the sky gives off a more detailed atmosphere.
Rural landscape is photos of an area that is not densely populated or intensively developed that isn’t protected land.
Influential Landscapes – (Mood Board/Examples)
I found these images of landscapes off Google, and found their respected photographers. I want to try and do a long exposure of the water, and include the details of the rocks.
Mitch Green
Derek Kind
Den Belitsky
Ansel Adams – (Case Study)
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.
At age 12, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He developed his photography skills, and later he was contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to make photographs of national parks.
He is mainly recognised talent was that he showed a deep technical understanding of how tonal range is recorded and developed in exposure, negative development, and printing.
His Famous Photos :
Ansel Adams Tonal Values
As you can see, Adams uses the excellent tonal values. For example, he used the darkest black, in the shadows of the mountains, on the other hand he has used the brightest white, in the highlights of snow resting in the mountain.
He uses filters to create and tone down the highlights in the sky. He mainly used a red filter and exposed it for 5 seconds, which created a darker sky, which is what Ansel Adams imagined. The top of the sky is normally grey the fades into a white.
Texture and Surface
The rocks always include high detail and lots of shadows. I can achieve this by increasing the clarity and texture in Photoshop. Black and white makes the detail stand out more as there are no colours that are distracting. There is normally a more dominant black and white colour, grey is used to display highlights and depth.
Composition
Adams uses leading lines to draw attention towards the main focal point, for example the river (2nd photo) progresses towards, and makes a path to the mountain in the background. This makes the image more powerful as there is more integrity and thought which has gone into it , creating this scenic view.
Adams sometimes uses rule of thirds; a composition guideline, to place more emphasis on a particular point, such as in the first photo.
Although, Adams also uses the foreground to his advantage. By including it into his image it adds depth and fills up blank/wasted space in the image.
What is Romanticism?
Romanticism was specified by its emphasis on emotion and character as well as emphasising nature. It also promoted the individual imagination of freedom from classical notions of form in art, since photography wasn’t popular as it had just stared in 1826, and romanticism was mostly reverent in the 1800 – 1850 era.
Romanticism examples in landscape
This photo was taken by Keith Arnatt, in 1982-1984. in an “area of outstanding natural beauty” it was following a long-established scenic route, the C
Arnatt represents a landscape that cannot fail but to live up to expectation, full of interrupting buildings and sharp corners.
The foreground is dominated by a bald curve of tarmac and a café. This might appear to be a misrepresentation of romantic landscape, but early tourists were just as struck by pointed, sharp contrasts of greatness.
Where can I photograph in Jersey?
Contact Sheet(Simplified)
Since I took over 600+ images I only put 1 screenshot of a small section of images as my contact sheet.
HDR exposure bracketing technique. What is it?
Exposure bracketing is when you create pictures with different exposure settings. (Overexposed, Balanced, Underexposed.) The purpose of this is to cover more of the dynamic range. Bracketed photos are used later to create an HDR (high dynamic range) photo. For example, in a normal photo the sky might be overexposed, therefore, the dark image produced by the bracket settings will keep all the detail in the sky, so when you put it into Photoshop or Lightroom to make the HDR image it will merge all the images together and keep all the best parts for each image. Overall it will created a high detailed image that is perfectly exposed in all areas.
To learn how to setup this technique I used a Youtube tutorial, that uses a Canon camera, this is the link :
All images below were taken with a tripod and a Canon DSLR 1300D, then edited in Adobe Photoshop.
Part Of The Process (HDR/Exposure Bracketing)
This is one of the screenshots from the first image I edited, it shows the Camera Raw Filter being added to HDR image. Photoshop merges the 3 images for you so I wasn’t able to screenshot it doing that.
My HDR Images
As you can see there are four photos above. The larger one is the final edit, which I made from the three images I took using bracketing technique, which I will show in every image.
This is my favourite one alongside the castle image. The image has high details in the highlights and shadows which creates a nice depth in the mud and rows of flowers. The tractor marks creates leading lines that focus on the tree that is centred in the image, as well the rule of thirds composition is used as the horizon rests on the bottom 3rd of the image. The colours are vibrant and isn’t over saturated, which is what I was worried about creating the HDR image.
This image I wanted to create a moody atmosphere, as it was cloudy, so I added a gradual filter to the sky using a camera raw filter in Photoshop, and added a high dehaze, clarity and darkened the shadows to bring out the detail in the sky. After I added a more detailed texture to the ground to match the scene I created with he sky. By using the rule of thirds it makes it so that the yellow flowers aren’t all visible making it not destroy the grumpy atmosphere with contrast of happy flowers.
I wanted to show the scale of the coast in this image, by including the small pier as the comparison. There isn’t much detail in the clouds which makes you focus on the actual terrain, which is the effect is wanted to created. I love the different shades of blue coincide with each other, and how the water is a nice turquoise colour, where as the sky is a deeper blue.
This image is a normal landscape image that looks like it would be a screensaver on a computer. I feel that there is a motion in the clouds which move horizontally, this also exaggerates the integrity in detail in the clouds, which could suggest a more complex understanding to just a picture with pretty flowers and cool clouds as the have this “heavenly” look to them.
This is one of my favourite images. I was going for the abandoned look, so I made the camera tilt to the side so it looked like the castle was left and abandoned quickly, the visual aesthetic of overgrown ivy and vegetation adds a strong characteristic to the effect I was going for. The detail that the HDR image provided really helped show how the walls were washed out and how dense and compact the forest was. Overall, I’m really happy hoe this tuned out as I want planning to photograph this until suggested by family. The colours aren’t super saturated as it would have ruined the worn down look.
The sunlight was disappearing, therefore it was breaking through he clouds in the formation of rays, I thought this would be a good experiment of exposure bracketing as the were a steep difference between lights and darks, eg the sunlight and the forest line. I went for the moody evening vibes, when editing this photo. So I added a gradual filter to decrease the dehaze in the sky and underexpose it, then a radial filter to increase the temputerure of the rays of light to add more emphasis to it. The foreground is a bit blurry as the flowers were sawing in the wind. This is due to the 3 images being combined into one with a o.5 second time interval between each shot. Even with photoshop auto-align software is was not able to fix this, as the sky as-well as most the image was aligned, due to the tripod I used. I am pleasantly pleased how this turned out and like the aesthetic it gives off.
My Images
These were the good images from my combined photoshoots.
Best Images
These were the final best images for the 4 Photoshoots that I did. They were all edited in Photoshop and occasionally Lightroom.
This set of images are the HDR images that I have previously explained what I like about them. Although these are my favourite 3, due to high detail and preservation of the colour almost an exact replica to real life.
This image shows the linear pattern in the daffodil field, which contrasts between the irregular patterns in the clouds. The highlight on the clouds make it seem like this is an old pattern in the style of Picasso. The colours are nice and vibrant, which gives off a positive atmosphere.
This image has that vintage feel to it, as the clarity is high, which brings out all the discoloured vegetation on the hill. The small cottage is marked using the rule of thirds composition terchnique. Similarly, this image also include detailed clouds, which was achieved by using a gradual filter in Photoshop.
I wanted to focus on the highlights in this image, so I gave the tip of the rock a halo effect, as that was where the most light was. The increased clarity makes this image in the style of Ansel Adams, as he uses highly detail images mostly including rocks in all of his photos. The light was coming from the top right which makes for some unique shadows which I brought out by decreasing the darks and increasing the contrast. I like how it turned out as it feels mysterious and magical, probably due to the irregular shape.
This image clearly shows the jagged cliffs catching the shadows of the cloudy afternoon. The foreground is dark, but as the cliff gets further away it gets lighter. This helps add more depth to the image. The tower is visible as it doesn’t fit into the landscape, which helps identify it as the main focal point. The clouds are slightly overexposed, although you can still see the texture in them. Overall I really love as the composition is good as it focuses on something in the distance and also include the natural part of Jersey.
The 3 levels of dark tonal values, is what makes this image stand out. It consists of the blacks in the foreground, with the grey behind it, then finally to the light-grey figures in the background which the lighthouse is apart of. Overall the harsh contrast between the sky and the rocks juxtapose each other against light and dark. I achieved the star effect caused by the sun, by using a high f-stop value, eg. f-32.
Ansel Adams Comparison With My Own Image
Ansel Adams Image
My Image
Ansel Adams
Mine
Similarly, both mine and Adams images are of a natural landscape, which display rock formations. Both include a dark portion of the foreground on the side of the image. Although, Ansel Adams image uses scale to exaggerate how large the mountain is, by including the moon, which is a huge natural satellite.
A black and white filter is used on both of the images. Ansel Adams has covered the whole of tonal zone system, going from 0, being black through to 10 being white, displaying different shades. This really puts emphasis on the highlights as it creates a high harmonious contrast, which also brings out the structure int the image.
Likewise, both images use natural light produced by the sun, as the images were taken in daylight. Adams image has a gentle feel to it as the light has a gradual fade from white to black, which gives off a calm but expressive atmosphere. Compared to mine which has a more abrupt, intense change in tone and light, which produces a more energised atmosphere. However, mine could signify hope, as most of the image is in the negative colour; black, that expresses a more sad, depressing mood. Except for the “halo” at the top of the rock, which is like the light at the end of the tunnel, and-that means that there is a delicate, alive essence to this photo.
New Topographic is a man altered landscape such as a landscape with a man made rail track leading through a forest. Many of the photographers who were included with the new topographics were inspire by the man made urban areas such as parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses. These photos featured in an exhibition at the International Museum of Photography in Rochester, New York; this also gave the message that the natural landscape has a growing erosion by industrial development.
LOCATIONS – North coast cliffs ( Grosnez, Plemont, Portlet ), St Ouen’s ( sand dunes ), rocky beaches ( Archirondel, Green Island, La Hocq, La Rocq ), fields.
CAMERA SETTINGS / VIEWPOINTS – Bird’s eye, worm’s view, straight on / eye level, through trees, ISO, shutter speed, different exposure levels.
ARTIST REFERENCES – FAY GODWIN
MY RESPONSE – CONTACT SHEETS
FINAL IMAGES
EDITING – BLACK AND WHITE
ARTIST COMPARISON
When taking my photographs I tried to always refer back to Godwin’s work, and I went to places and locations which looked similar to those in her own images. For example, in the photograph above I shot in a field that looked close to the one in her own image. There are many similarities between these two photographs, one being that the landscape is sloping downwards in both images. Fay Godwin has captured the slanting landscape in the background of her photograph, whilst in mine it is in the foreground. I aimed to keep my image as real and unedited as possible just as she had done in order to give the viewer a real depiction of the environment that I was in. The weather conditions in the two photographs are very similar, with the clouds in the background creating a moody and melancholy atmosphere. Additionally, the white colour of the clouds contrasts with the darker tones of the trees and the grass. The lines that appear in both of these photographs are natural and curvy, which shows how the environment hasn’t been touched or changed. If this was the case, there would be straight, rigid and repetitive lines, which is something that Godwin wanted to avoid in her images. I think that my final photograph successfully shows influences of Fay Godwin’s work, and that both images portray the same mood and feeling to the viewer.
“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
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.
Landscape photography shows spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes.
LOCATION- any beach such as grev de leq, st ouen or st aubins. The sand dunes, any woods such as St.Catherines woods. Steep cliffs in Plemont. Fields and farms up in Trinity.
Weather condition/ lighting- Sunny, bright and vibrant. Foggy and dull. Rain and stormy weather with loads of wind
Camera angle- worms viewpoint, bird eye point of view or straight on from your individual p.o.v.
