“New Topographic”, a term coined in 1975 by William Jenkins which referred to a photographic movement undertaken by a group of American photographers whose works had a similar look – mostly uniform, black and white urban landscapes.

Some of the photographers associated with this movement where Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher.

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The movement captures mans impact, they photographed urban landscapes such as garages, parking lots, warehouses in a similar way to how early rural landscape photographers would shoot natural landscapes.

As environmentalism took hold of the public conscience in the 1970s landscape photography began to capture natural landscapes and human activity as a singular connected body.

New topographic pieces captured the essence and beauty of these depressing, mundane, industrialized landscapes. This aura created around the aesthetic of these images is an ironic juxtaposition to the unease the photographers felt about mans erosion of the natural environment. This was represented in their work from the emotional disparity they created in their pieces with a lack of human presence, flat contrast, lowkey tones, centred framing and unassuming depth and lighting.

On the other hand this divide they portrayed between man and nature was done with aesthetic precession. The Artists that made up the new topographic noticed how there seemed to be a sense of obscenity around photographing these urban landscapes. There was a sort of fear man had around looking at its own creations. They wanted to highlight this by photographing the urban and providing it with an aesthetic… The photographers created beauty in these images by shooting from a unique viewpoint. They shot with a deadpan aesthetic in mind and looked for sharp angles or structural elements.