Who is he?

An American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through his book The New West and his participation in the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975.

 In the 1970s and 1980s he produced a series of books, The New West, Denver, What We Bought, Summer Nights which focused on expanding suburbs along Colorado’s Front Range, books that pictured heedless development but also the surviving light, scale, form, and silence of the natural world. He also examined this mixture of humanity’s imprint and nature’s resilience in the wider western landscape he has also occasionally published smaller, sometimes more personal volumes.

His work

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These photographs are what I am going to mainly base mine on, following his widely spread landscapes.

The New Topographics–

The New Topographics was a term developed in 1975 by William Jenkins, used to describe a group of (mainly American) Urban landscape photographers. Their work was mostly in black and white, and looked at the relationship between human development and the natural world. Some notable members of this group include Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon, and Bernd and Hiller Becher. Their works are often in a deadpan or banal aesthetic, used to show the rigid, stark design of industrial construction.

Rut Blees Luxemburg Case Study–

Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German-born, British Photographer. Her images are mostly of Urban Landscapes at night, using vibrant colours and unique lighting to create unique and memorable images.

An image taken by Luxemburg in 1999. It is of some city steps while it is raining and night. The water reflects a harsh city light juxtaposing the dark concrete of the stairs and walls, making it look like there is a waterfall of light. These playful and unique compositions contrast the stark industrial architecture of many cities and perfectly fits the goal of the New Topographics movement. There are no people in this image, only the remainders of some footsteps being swallowed by the rain, making the audience feel isolated and lonely, as well as making them to experience the sublime, the footsteps being washed away as a reminder of how small humanity really is in comparison to nature, even in a big city.

i edited this image until i was happy with how it looked then i made a virtual copy and changed the copy to black and white to see which one would be better because a lot of the examples i looked at where black and white.

this images was taken along the grosnez coast line which has the tallest cliffs in jersey. i also experimented with putting this in black and white aswell

this image is of the pinacle in gorsnez i used the gourse bush to give depth to the images with a forground a mid ground and the swell breaking in the background. i also experimented with putting this image in black and white

this image is of white rock with the vibrance turned up to show of the beatiful blues in the background of the image. the forgroun of the headland gives depth to the image and the swell around the rock outline the focal point and the pointey shape of the rock brings your focal pooitn from the bottom up to the white rock on the top.

this mages shows the the beach of le Braie in the foreground the Hedland in the midground and Corriere lighthouse in the background. I liked the effect the sea spray created mist around the headland and the lighthouse. I edited this image bring out a wider range of colours in the sky to highlight the paragliders.

i experimented with a similar image taken in landscape, that I put in two tones because I looked the effect it gave between the darker bottom of the image and the lighter tones in the sky.

i think this is my best image from rural landscapes bec asue it captures the a large expanse with the focal point of the image goes to the larger boulder in the center of the frame the bunker in the background also helps add depth to the image with a background and midground and forground.

Joel Sternfeld is an American fine-art colour photographer. He is noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and helping establish colour photography as a respected artistic medium. Sternfeld’s work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Joel was influenced by the roadside photography of Walker Evans, Sternfeld’s projects document people and places with an exacting sense of colour that visually rhymes with the subject matter, as seen in his seminal series American Prospects (1987). “No individual photo explains anything.

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Even though Joel Sternfeld isn’t your typical “street photographer” he started off as one. Although he was inspired by his contemporaries at the time and started off shooting with a 35mm Leica (like everyone else) he eventually branched out and found his own voice shooting large-format 8×10 colour landscape photographs.

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American Prospects – Book by Joel Sternfeld

American Prospects is a book that was first published in 1987 and was produced by Joel Sternfeld. The book contains 152 pages and 71 images all displayed in the same way. All the images that are in the book all have similar features such as a slight natural location with a few man-made structures throughout. The book usually costs around £85-£100.

new topographical photography show the beauty in the mundane, reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world. reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.

 Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel Jr are all the people that started the new topographical movement. 1975 exhibition New Topographic signalled a radical shift away from traditional landscapes.

This image was taken by Robert Adam and I like the juxtaposition between the foreground of the man made harsh white boxes and the background of the rolling hills with smooth organic shapes along the horizon. image is like a before and after because it shows the earth as it was the unnatural shapes humans have produced that litter the earth.

This image has a wider angle which shows more of the organic environment which makes the sea of white boxes look out of place. this images shows the natural foreground with a man made midground and a natural background which greatest a sandwiching affect which makes the mobile homes look even more out of place.

This is my mood bored of different new topographic images that will inspire me to take images around Jersey

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“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography.

About

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.

Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape. 

What was both novel and challenging about New Topographics was not only the photographs’ content, but how they made viewers feel. By foregrounding, rather than erasing human presence, the photographs placed people into a stance of responsibility towards the landscape’s future—a position that resonated with ecology, the branch of environmental thought that was gaining traction in the 1970s.

Ansel adams topography

Ansel Adams wanted his viewers to feel as uplifted as he had when looking at the scenery in person. His photographs contributed to the cause of conservationism, the environmental approach that seeks to preserve landscapes and protect them from human democracy.

New Topographics represented a radical shift of landscape photography from photos of the natural environment, to photos of the built new developing environment. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made new delepoing areas of America. Carparks, suburban housing and warehouses were all photographed with beauty that they were not considered to have, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape. These new topographic photographers were less concerned with portraying an ideal image of nature and were more interested in showing plainly how man has altered it.

Examples of the New Topographic images

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These images depict the difference between the natural landscape of the world, and how man-made structures have altered the natural landscape. In the images you can see man made structures that still contain natural landscapes and nature around them, depicting that even though the world has been impacted by these structures, nature still exists around them.

What was the New Topographics a reaction to?

It can be argued that the New Topographics was a reaction to the traditional photographs of landscapes taken by photographers such as Ansel Adams. These new photographers wanted to shift away from the traditional landscape photos to create new unusual landscape photographs of the new developing world, a huge shift away. These new photos of everyday buildings taking over nature, placed people into a stance of responsibility towards the landscape’s future, a branch of thought which became very popular in the 1970s.

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New Topographic -was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers whose pictures had a similar aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscapes

These photographers 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.

Henry Wessel examples

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what was the new topographics a reaction to?

is a reaction to a newly formed man made environment and its impact on nature itself it also represents what environments people encounter in their day to day life

After going through some of my images I chose a few with good lighting, and perspectives

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While I have made very subtle adjustments, they were necessary because I feel that the original image was a bit too overexposed and so in order to tone it down and give the surrounding trees and ruins more detail.

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New topographics was a term used by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (eg. Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape. It was also an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography.

Lewis Baltz

Robert Adams