A typology is a system that is used for putting things in to groups based on how similar they are. In photography this can be seen by grouping images of the same or similar objects together that share the same level of high consistency. For example putting images of buildings with the same environment.

Examples of different typologies:

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Bernd and Hilla Becher were a German couple who took images of the disappearing industrial architecture in Europe and North America. Their photography was very different to other photographer as they started off by documenting the history of German architecture before the structures were removed. Their images would consist of water towers, factories, coal bunkers and other industrial structures. When taking their images they always wanted they sky to be separated from the structure or subject in the image. They also wanted the sky to be plain, so would take their images on an overcast day to make sure the background was clear with no clouds. To make sure the background was clear they would go to the same structure at different times of day and would have to wait for the weather to change. Once they had got all their images they would group their similar images together, in a grid formation, creating many typologies; which can be seen below. The idea of presenting their images in a grid formation was inspired by Karl Blossfeldt as he presented his images of plants in that way.

Examples of their work:

Kevin Bauman

Bauman is a Montana based photographer who specialises in architectural photography such as his well know project  100 Abandoned Houses. His photography has been used by many interior design clients.

Bauman’s project ‘100 Abandoned Houses’ photography is unique and displays a range of houses in different environments. Kevin Bauman said taking the images were “a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of my home town. I had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence.” I like how he has taken something that we see in everyday life and made it fascinating in a way that each individual image leaves the viewer wondering what story the house has.

Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer who was most well know for his images he took of plants however, he started out as a sculptor. He created typologies out of his natural that he took his images on a camera he made out of wood. Blossfeldt took his images of the plants as he wanted to reveal the essential form of each plant.

Night photography is used to express the world in a different light. images taken after dark of landscapes, cityscapes, or the night sky have greater depth, emotional quality, and sense of emptiness or abandonment that daytime photographs of the same location might lack.

Below is my attempt at some night time photography:

Using a selection of different images from my landscape shoots, I compiled some montages from my favourite outcomes:

We went on a walk from harve des pas to la Collette and I took lots of images inspired by the new topographics movement on the way, here are some of the images before editing:

On lightroom i looked through the images and selected the best outcomes:

These are the edited outcomes:

All of these images were edited and adapted on Lightroom to follow the style of the New Topographics movement.

Final images

The two images below are my best images as I feel that the monochrome look gives them an ominous and solemn look.

Robert Adams was a photographer who documented the extent of the damage to the American West. His refined black-and-white photographs document scenes of the American West revealed the impact of human activity on nature. His images often lack human subjects however manage to capture the physical traces of human life. An underlying tension in Adams’s work is the contradiction between landscapes visibly adapted or scarred by human presence, through buildings and industrialisation, and the beauty of the natural land captured in the camera. The complex photographs express sombre indignation by exposing the darkness of the nineteenth-century and shows how humans view the West as an unlimited natural resource for human consumption despite the destruction being caused. However, his work also conveys hope that things can change.

His goal

“is to face facts but to find a basis for hope. To try for alchemy.”

The image Colorado springs displays a melancholy and sombre scene of the silhouette of a woman stood in a suburban house. It was taken in a time of great change as many peoples life’s were abandoned and they moved to the new suburbs created to ensure there was enough housing after all the soldiers came back from war and started families. However, this meant many people had to move to these new suburbs leaving everything they knew before behind for this desolate and lonely land. Robert Adams photographed around these suburban towns and encapsulated the atmosphere and emotions of the residents through his images, such as the one above, to capture the damage and transformations happening to natural landscapes. His images are strategically taken to portray this meaning using the repetition of rectangular shapes surrounding the figure zoom in the viewers attention onto the woman to leave her as the main subject as she represents the loneliness and isolation many people were facing in this situation. The black and white filter further develops the melancholy feeling to the image as all colour is stripped portraying the way peoples life’s have been changed and the dark tones portray the sadness. The image is quiet with minimal eye catching elements to represent the feeling of seclusion and lack of joy present in these new suburban towns making the viewer wonder if the woman is perhaps reminiscing her life before being moved to the desolate suburbs. The natural lighting continues the sense of ‘realness’ showing the scene as he found it to accurately display the events. From what I can tell Adam’s used a fast shutter speed as I believe the image isn’t set up so the woman would have most likely been moving which means he must of had a quick shutter speed to ensure she wasn’t blurred from the motion. I believe the image was also taken with natural lighting as he is outside and not in a studio further displaying the ‘real’ insight into the situation as the scene has not been set up in a studio it is how he found it. Overall, I think Robert Adams created this image to show an accurate representation of how the residents of the town were feeling at the time and showing their loneliness and isolation and almost giving them a voice, through his images, in a time where they had been sent away leaving them silenced.

New topographics was a term created by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers; for example Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz, whose photography had a similar banal style. The photos were (mostly) monochrome and formal of the urban landscape. Many of the photographers associated with new topographics were inspired by the man-made buildings and adaptions. Carparks, suburban housing and warehouses were all portrayed with a beautiful stark austerity.

Robert Adams

Robert Adams is an American photographer born May 8th 1937 in New Jersey. He focused his work on the changing American West landscape. His work became popular, due to his books for example, The New West and his exhibitions.

Analysis

This is a digital monochrome photograph from an exhibition titled The New West by Robert Adams in the 1970s. The mise en scene presents a rectangular house with an window revealing a silhouette of a woman. The repetition of rectangles suggests peacefulness and security. The focal point of the image is the silhouette of the woman this is because silhouettes attract and remove distractions of details such as smiles and imperfections.

The aperture is around f/16 due to the dark exposure and wide depth of field. The shutter speed is very fast and the lighting is natural sun lighting. The photograph follows the rule of thirds as shown with the orange lines.

To conclude, personally I really like this image and I think the silhouette is so powerful in contrast to the rectangular shapes. I would love to recreate something similar to this. For example, at Plemont there are old ruins of a building which I could use:

Robert Adams states:

“I think if you placed me almost anywhere and gave me a camera you could return the next day to find me photographing. It helps me, more than anything I know, to find home.”

New Topography Photoshoot Ideas

El Tico

Harve Des Pas and La Collette

What is Typology?

Typology is typically a body of work that holds consistency throughout the work, usually in the environment, subjects and presentation.

Bernd and Hilla Becher

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.

Black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure. The rigorous frontality of the individual images gives them the simplicity of diagrams, while their density of detail offers encyclopaedic richness.

research who influenced the Bechers’… from three German photographers in the 1920s, Karl Blosfeldt (plant studies), August Sander (portraits of citizens of Cologne) and Albert Renger-Patz (he photographed industrial landscapes)

The Bechers’ were inspired by Karl Blossfeldts plant studies, they were inspired by the way he presented his work.

Kevin Bauman

100 Abandoned Houses:

The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. He actually began photographing abandonment in Detroit in the mid 90’s as a creative outlet, and as a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of his home town. Bauman had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence.

100 Abandoned houses is my favourite project of Kevin Bauman. Each abandoned house contrasts one another yet they fit perfectly when put together next to eachother. Every house is different in its own way, however, as the pictures are taken roughly from the same distance, they belong.

I went out on a walk and took pictures of old buildings and sculptures

final edits