These are my favorite images because i think they best display the New Topographic style of photography and urban photography through the strong tonal ranges, along with the ‘dirty’ and ‘raw’ feel to the images created through increased contrast.
Inspirations
As you can see, Lewis Baltz directly inspired many of these images, for example, the ones I took of the dark double doors against the lighter white all the building.
This is similar to some of Lewis Baltz work such as:
My Final Outcome
Here I darkened the darks of the image to create greater contrast between the door and building wall. This also emphasises the dirt and texture on the wall, much like in the top left of Baltz’s image above. My image is less exposed than Baltz’s image because i feel like it gives the image a more ‘real’ feeling as you can see the textures and dirt on the wall more clearly.
Lewis Baltz was a visual artist and photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s. – Wikipedia
Lewis Baltz worked as a freelance photographer in California and his urban photographs took a very specific and unique form.
Many of his images are framed directly facing a wall, building or object. This gives a flat and almost 2D look to the photographs, but the strong contrast between the highlights and the shadows create the sense of depth that is lacking from the angle that the image is taken.
Whilst most of his work has this format, some of his images are taken at different angles, usually 45 degrees from the object/building but sometimes differing. Although the angles are different, the same black and white tones and high contrast can be seen consistently throughout all of his work.
Photo Analysis
In this image, Lewis Baltz took the image on a bright day while it was cloudy. This is shown through the diffused lighting which is evenly lighting the shot and the lack of harsh shadows. He has used a fairly high aperture allowing the whole flat surface to be in focus, most likely f.8-10. The shutter speed could have varied depending on the exact aperture that was used and the intensity of the natural light at the time. The quality of the image is crisp, but crisp for the time that the image was captured in 1974, also using fairly low ISO.
The image was captured in black and white, allowing for the high contrast between the highlights and shadows, and the different colours of the wall to pop out more, such as the harsh difference between the dark material at the top of the wall, and the plain white door in the centre of the image. The image, much like many other photographs taken by Lewis Baltz, is taken looking flat directly towards the building, giving a 2D view to the surface. This emphasizes the geometric shapes and right angles created by the varying textures and objects.
The image is also taken at head height, almost giving a point of view perspective of what it would be like to actually be at the location of where the photograph was shot. The overall image shows the jagged and harsh lines which appear in urban and industrial areas/landscapes.
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
Lewis Baltz
Joe Deal
Frank Gohlke
Henry Wessel Jr.
What was the new topographics a reaction to?
Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinatingtopography 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.
‘The very nature of Romanticism is rather uncontrollable and unpredictable. At other times its quiet and sensual power manifests into beautiful and stunning images.’
Romanticism placed particular emphasis on emotion, horror, awe, terror and apprehension. Emotion and feeling were central not only to the creation of the work, but also in how it should be read – meaning that the photograph provokes the viewer to feel a certain way, which makes the image create a bigger impact on the viewer.
Adam Williams
This is an example of romanticism in landscape photography because the bright colors and misty flow of the water, along with the dark, stormy clouds creates a powerful atmosphere which provokes the viewer to feel a certain way.
Romanticism in landscapes is also found in other art forms such as paintings:
Bierstadt: In the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, 1868Cole: The Oxbow: The Connecticut River near Northampton, 1846
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph – Wikipedia
Ansel Adams – Landscapes
This is an incredible landscape shot taken by Ansel Adams of The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
Ansel Adams uses the rule of thirds to create the perfect landscape shot. He framed the shot so that the top third of the image is the sky, and the lower third of the image is the land, creating balance in the image while bringing most of the attention of the viewer to the details on the ground in the midground.
The perspective of the image looks across the landscape, watching the river wind away from the camera, almost creating a vanishing point where the river appears to get smaller as it bets further away.
There is a large sense of depth in the image without using a wide aperture, Ansel Adams achieved this by using a small aperture and capturing a vast landscape. The focus of the image is the mid ground/background, the mountains. The size of the mountains compared to the flat river and woodlands in the foreground/mid ground creates a sense of depth and shows how far away the mountains are.
This sense of depth also giver the mountains and the image as a whole a sense of scale and how much Ansel Adams captured in one frame.
The lighting in this image is the diffused sunlight from the overcast sky. This creates even lighting throughout the image, with no harsh shadows or over exposed areas.
The image is in black and white which emphesises the tonal range. The contract within the image is high which gives dark shadows in the trees and the base of the mountains, but light highlights of the snow on the mountains and the light reflecting off of the river. This also adds to the depth of the image showing the scale of the dark shadows cast by the mountains.
Rural Landscape – ‘the diverse portion of the nation’s land area not densely populated or intensively developed, and not set aside for preservation in a natural state.’
Rural landscape photography is similar to photographing urban lanscapes, the difference is rural photography is about capturing the ‘life’ in the countryside.
