What is new topographic?

New Topographic means a radical shift by reviewing the concern that surrounded landscape pictures as a fabricated environment.

New topographic was invented by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers. (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar aesthetic. They were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscapes.

What was the new topographic a reaction to?

Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography 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. In one way, they had been photographing in opposition to the subculture of nature images that the likes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston had created.

Who are the photographers like Robert Adams?

Many of the photographers associated with new topographic including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact.