About

Robert Hickman Adams was born on May 8,1937 in Orange, New Jersey. Robert contracted polio at the age of 12, in his back, left arm, and hand but was luckily able to recover. Adams would later enrol in the University of Colorado in 1955, and attended it for his first year, but decided to transfer the next year to the University of Redlands in California where he received his B.A. in English. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Southern California and received his PhD in English Literature, in 1965. In 1960, while at Redlands, he met and married Kerstin Mornestam, who shared the same interest in the arts and nature.

In 1963, Adams bought a 35 mm camera and began to take pictures mostly of nature and architecture. He soon read complete sets of Camera Work, Aperture and learned photographic techniques from Myron Wood (a professional photographer who lived in Colorado). In 1966, he began to teach only part-time to have more time to photograph and in 1970, he began working as a full-time photographer.

Image Analysis

With this image, I like how we are shown nature and manmade structures mixing together, with the tree and landscape in the background mixing against the road and house. I also like how the black and white in the image highlight the different tones used.

I also like how we are able to see the horizon in the background as it helps to level out the image. The road in this picture also acts as a leading line to guide the eyes to the main focus of the image.

For this picture, I really like how you are able to see the silhouette of the person through the window as it gives of a feeling of isolation. I also like the black and white of the image as it creates a contrast.
The path leading up to the house creates a leading line directing the viewers eyes to the figure.

New Topographic was the reaction to the post war suburbanisation of America documenting the growing unease with the natural landscape being eroded by industrial development it rejected the peaceful sublime photos of Ansel Adams and other ‘pure’ Photographers in favour of capturing man-made structure contrasting with the natural land scape straying from romanticism instead focusing on the stark industrialised scenes of the American west.

A Topograph is the Graphic representation of the surface features of a place or region on a map. ‘New Topographics’ focuses on the base representation of the industrial mixing with the natural landscape with the goal not to be skewed by romanticiation or artistic beauty. inspried by new objectivists like Albert Renger Patch New Topographics depicted everyday scenes and the mundane of daily life but free from distraction forcing the viewers to look at the suburbanization and urban desolation around them.

The 1975 New Topographic exhibition lead by William Jenkins which contained the works of eleven photographers to each show ten prints- Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel Jr. Jenkins described in the show catalogue “a problem of style:” “stylistic anonymity“ the hope to achieve an absence of style.

New topographers often focused on line as buildings have harsh unnatural lines that contrasted with the sloping + flowing landscape.

for these images a selected the outlines and upped the saturation

New objectivity is a movement in German art that came up during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Albert Renger-Patzsch, born June 22 1897 – September 27 1966, was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity.

Renger-Patzsch worked as a press photographer in the early 1920s before becoming a freelancer in 1925. He published a book titled ‘The choir stalls of Cappenberg’

As a class, we went to Havre Des Pas to take images of urban landscapes.

We tried to walk round from Havre Des Pas to the harbour, we ended up stopping near the Jersey Electricity power plant. I managed to take over 200 images during this walk.

These are some of my favourite images that I took:

When we got back into class, I used lightroom to sort the images and edit them.

I ended up having 291 images total but not all of them were good so I flagged the good ones, this narrowed it down to 135 images.

Here are some of my favourite edits of my images:

“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was a pioneering exhibition of existing landscape photography grasped at the George Eastman House’s International Museum of Photography from October 1975 to February 1976. The show, curated by William Jenkins, had a unending impact on beautiful and abstract approaches to American landscape photography

Topography was both a reflection of the progressively suburbanised world about them, and a reaction to the dictatorship of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the basic.

New Topographics photography questioned the supposed differentiation between cultural and open landscapes. In doing so, the New Topographics photographers formally refer to and ironize past countenances of “pristine” wilderness

A critical juncture in the history of photography, the 1975 exhibition New Topographics signalled a radical shift outside limits traditional descriptions of landscape.

PHOTOSHOOT PLAN:

WHAT?

I will be taking images of abandoned buildings, specifically maybe the doors and windows. Possibly I could also take pictures of Jerseys incineration site.

WHERE?

Where I will be taking pictures is around Harve De Pas, Victoria Road estate, there is also an abandoned house behind Waitrose, St Saviour.

WHEN?

I will be taking the images on the weekend of 10th and 11th but if not then the Monday 12th December, photoshoot will depend on the weather due to not wanting depressing dark images, clouds need to be muted.

HOW?

I will take picture’s on my iPhone, or by using the school camera which is a DSLR camera.

WHY?

Most Importantly I will be taking this pictures to fit with the Topographic aesthetic. I will be taking Landscape photos due to this part of my project being landscape. I will use inspiration from Hilla and Bernd Becher images that they took when they began the whole Typologies project.

PLACES FOR PHOTOSHOOT:

WHAT IS TYPOLOGIES?

A photographic typology is a study of “types”. That is, a photographic series that prioritizes “collecting” rather than stand-alone images. It’s a powerful method of photography that can be used to reshape the way we perceive the world around us.

MOODBOARD

The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, invented New typologies, they began working together in 1959 and married in 1961, are best known for their “typologies”—grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure.

WHO ARE HILLA AND BERND BECHER?

Hilla Becher was a German artist born in 1931 in Siegen, Germany. She was one half of a photography duo with her husband Bernd Becher. For forty years, they photographed disappearing industrial architecture around Europe and North America.

They won the Erasmus Prize in 2002 and Hasselblad Award in 2004 for their work and roles as photography professors at the art academy Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Stoic and detached, each photograph was taken from the same angle, at approximately the same distance from the buildings. Their aim was to capture a record of a landscape they saw changing and disappearing before their eyes.

INFERENCES TO THE BECHERS:

The three people that influenced the Bechers were:

1. Karl Blossfeldt
2. August Sander
3. Albert Renger-Patzsch

Karl Blossfeldt inspired them to create a photoshoot and laying out the images in the style of a triptik. Albert Renger-Patzsch gave them the idea that you can create a new style of photography with any pictures, Renger-Patzsch created a series of photography of taking pictures of plants. August Sander was part of the new objectivity movement which inspired a lot of photographers including Hilla and Bernd Becher to take heir own movement and ceate their own style of photography.