I like these images because I think they all respond well to the brief of New Topographics, as they all have a very muted and desolate tone. I also think that there is a lot of alignment between my images and those of the most famous artists of the movement.
A photographic typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects, environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject.
The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher began documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’.
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 so once again, Typologies not only recorded a moment in time, they prompted the viewer to consider the subject’s place in the world. They made sure to take the photos when the light was soft, showing a clear difference between the sky and building. This meant they waited hours or even days to photograph a single picture, avoiding the weather they didn’t want (especially bright, harsh sunlight).
The couple photographed a couple of buildings with a similar structure and design, taking multiple pictures of different sides of each building. They then put the photos into a 3×7 grid, creating an effective look by comparing each image. The colourless, dull sky plays a major role in the photo, allowing the building to be clearly separated from the background.
The couple photographed the same structure in different places, taking the photos from the same distance and perspective, centreing the structure in the frame and tightly cropping the surrounding buildings to create a pattern of repetition. They put their photos into a 3×3 grid, creating a sense of perfect symmetry. Once again, each photo was taken on a dull, bleak day, allowing us to focus on every aspect of the structure without being distracted by the background/ without the light changing the look of it.
Bauman took 100 photos of 100 different abandoned homes and displayed them all in a 8×14 grid. The grid causes the different tones and shades to contrast and clash, creating an interesting final piece. Each photo is taken at a face on angle, presenting the front of the house in a square image.
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.
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.
Lewis Baltz’ photography consisted of the search to find beauty in stark bleak landscape reflecting human control by photographing common architecture factories, car parks, stations ect.
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, 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’