Being a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers, such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Frank Gohlke. The New Topographics consisted of mainly black and white prints of urban altered landscapes, taken together, their photographs, formed a shared aesthetic of banal appearance.
(Robert Adams – “The place we live”)
(Lewis Baltz – “New Topographics: Photographs of a man altered landscape”)
(Frank Gohlke – “Grain Elevator and Lightning Flash, Lamesa Texas, 1975”)
What was the ‘New Topographics’ a reaction to?
Being a reaction to the rapid cases of urban sprawl across America, it showed the oddly fascinating topography of areas usually perceived as mundane locations. This consisted of large urbanised towns, industrial sites and more. Not only capturing the reflection of an increasingly urbanising country, it also served as a reaction to the more common and idealised landscape photography of natural and elemental landscapes, like such as artists as Ansel Adams.
(Ansel Adams, Cathedral Peak and Lake, Yosemite National Park, California)
birthed in the 1970s, the ‘New Topographics’ sprouted from a struggling post-war America. After the second world war, Soldiers had returned home to their wives and got busy creating the Baby-boom generation. In this time period of America the countries birth rate increased massively from 1955 to 1964 nearly 42 million had been born.
After this in the 1970s, many of these baby boomer now had grown into young adults. More homes were needed to accommodate these adults and their new families and as a result, America saw a rapid increase in homes and suburbia. Another problem post-war was the challenges with the economy, inflation and labour unrest. If there was a sudden collapse in price and wage control, many feared it would lead to inflation of prices.
For my photoshoot I based some of my photos from Eugene smiths documentative series ‘Country Doctor’, Creating my own version, I explored in my photoshoot the way Masculinity, Femininity and Identity are explored throughout my Relatives locally owned business, A pig farm.
‘A day in the life’ – George Blake
In comparison to my inspiration, I think I created a good visual and textual inspired photoshoot for my edited photographs. With a similar concept in mind I went my own way with documenting through a photo essay of the ‘day in the life’ of my relatives pig farm.
Comparison –
I find that these images create a comparison, due to both images capturing the subject in a working environment. Despite different Jobs entirely, they’re similar in the fact both subjects in the image are doing a task related to their practice.
To me, these images can be shown to comparison from each other as Both images subject does not provide a direct eye contact to the camera. This for me creates that documentative element in these photographs as it further associates the subject into the image as the viewer is captured to their appearance within their environment.
In comparison to Smiths work, I believe my editing to create a picture essay, envisioned as a newspaper matches closely to his work. Going into detail about the contents within the image, I believe I have made a good replica of his concept.
Overall, I believe I have captured the same conceptual basis, the photographer, Eugene Smith had when creating these images. I think with the technical aspects, such as lighting and aperture, I was able to make a close match. Since Smith’s photos were made in 1948, I tried to replicate a newspaper effect from the time period. I based my idea of positioning my photographs to create that same effect as if being read out of a newspaper or magazine.
I was also inspired from a vintage WW2 Jersey Newspaper I own, where photographs were presented in small circles popping out on a page. Using my knowledge of photoshop I had gained from making diamond cameos, I recreated that effect with some of my smaller side images.
Studio Portraits –
For my photoshoot, I was inspired by a large mixture of photographers such as Henry Mullins, a local photographer who merged his studio portraits of people of Jersey into a Diamond Cameo and Andrés Gallardo Albajar, who got headshot photographs of people with and without hands covering their face, to then merge them as Multi-exposures.
In comparison to Mullins, I believe I was easily able to create a similar approach to his style, basing my concept of his, I used by photographs from my studio shots.
Comparisons –
Overall, I like how these came out a lot as I think I managed to create a similar style to both photographers. Using photos from when we played around with studio lighting, they are a mixture of Rembrandt, Chiaroscuro and butterfly lighting.
I would improve however with further with more photoshoots to be able to have a wider experimentation to Image manipulation. This is because I feel like I could create some additional diamond cameos and multi-exposures without over-using images from the shoot.
Environmental Portrait –
Inspired by the German photographer, August Sander, I wanted to recreate his style of some of his high contrast, environmental portraits. Using a similar aperture I tried to capture my portraits of people in their natural environments. I was also inspired by Alec Soth, who would photograph people doing their hobbies.
Overall, I like how these came out, I think the angles of the shots and composition produce an nice image, I would improve however with getting better lighting. As some of my photos appear to have less definition on shadows as during my photoshoot it wasn’t particularly a sunny day.
Comparison –
Overall, I like how these turned out. In comparison to, Soth’s and Sanders work, I think my images loosely take influence through capturing the visual concepts of people in their natural environments. How I would improve is for further exploration into environmental Portraits, capturing more realistic locations like a work place or home, I think combined with a more accurate attempt at shot distances, I could produce a similar style of image.
Taking inspiration from Eugene Smith’s ‘Country Doctor’, My photoshoot consists of a documentative series of images. I wanted to edit my images to look in the same way, to achieve the same composition.
First edits:
Overall, I like how this image came out. How I framed the shot is good, as it provides a clear shot of the subject and allows the viewer to create assumptions on the type of role my nan plays in the farm. In addition to this, the arrangement of items on the work desk in front of her creates an interesting Mise-en-scene which leads the eye around the images content. What I would improve however is trying to get a clearer quality of image, by having a higher aperture next time, it wont create as much of a motion blur on parts of her face and hands.
Like the previous image. I am fond on the outcome for this photograph. Using a mid-body shot, I think I created an interesting Mise-en-scene of my subject performing his task in a documentative style. With the arrangement of him handling the packaged meat and dressed in his work apron I think these combined to make the Mise-en-scene standout more. How I would improve is by having a lower exposure as the brightness behind him supresses more of the environment of the butchers kitchen.
By altering the temperature as well as some other elements like texture and dehazing, I think I was able to improve on this image, making it seem more contrasted then it did before. Like the other images, I have lowered the saturation to create the old uncoloured-film effect photographers had before its invention. To improve, I will use a larger aperture like F11 or F16 to reduce the motion blur. To me, this image provides a good example of identity for my aunt, as through her facial expressions, a viewer can connote she finds joy in her work.
I like how this image came out as, to me, it captures what I was hoping for in comparison to the ‘Country Doctor’ by Eugene Smith. by editing it, I made it more brighter as it was a low exposure. With the use of the components of the environment: such as the hose, pig and the trees in the background. These all combine to create an interesting composition of a day in the life on the farm. Additionally this goes to show my cousins portrait of one of her roles on the farm, furthermore it can be said to challenge the traditional roles given to men and women on a farm as usually the dirty work of feeding the pigs and etc is a ‘Mans job’.
For this image, I believe it already had a nice amount of light. Working of that I played around with the texture and clarity as well as shadows and white to black balance to make it stand out a lot more once I had lowered the saturation. I find that this image connotes a lot of Identity about the farm as the butcher statues weathered appearance shows how long they’ve spent as a local business.
Taken together, these pictures go to show another part of the process of working on a butchers farm, captured in a documentative style. With a large view into the environment we can see the type of activities the business gets up. With the arrangement of utensils on the table as well as the meat it helps to provide that aesthetic needed to produce an interesting composition. This can also go onto provide information on how masculinity is shown. Being very hands on with the job, it represents a traditional sense of a masculine role. When combined, with other images of my aunt and cousin, for example it creates a diverse image of a workplace not overly male-dominated, which is stereotypically expected when one thinks of a butchers farm.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I like the outcomes of these images and will make further edits to them soon in my practice exam. Taken together, and some other a companying photos, I find that these images can be seen to take inspiration from my artist reference, Eugene smith and his gallery of images in ‘Country Doctor’.
For this photoshoot I used my first Idea from my mood board of photographing members of my family, their colleagues, as well as the animals around the farm. I have composed a documentative series of images of the working parts of the farm with examples being the kitchen, animals and machinery, furtherly I have represented the identities of business through photographing them in their usual places.
Best Images:
Image Ratings:
Green coloured:
These photos are rated 4 – 5 on the star rating, and are flagged meaning I believe they fit the right aesthetic I am looking for with my plan of creating a documentative series of images for my project on Masculinity, Femininity and Identity. These pictures consist a merge of portrait pictures as well as some environmental portraits.
Yellow coloured:
These Images are a mix-match of images of either images I may possibly use or scrap depending on if I want them.
Red coloured:
These images did not fit the aesthetic because they where either blurry, poorly taken or not what I had in mind when I saw the results.
Conclusion
In the next blog post I will make edits to these images for my project with Masculinity, Femininity and Identity.
(Claude Cahun photographed her conceptions of what Masculinity and Femininity looked like).
Born as Lucy Schwob, Claude Cahun was a French photographer, writer and sculptor. Known for her exploration into questioning her Identity, she holds a strong title in being one of the early explorers of Gender Fluidity, decades before its modern prominence today. Changing her name to become more androgynous, she wanted to explore her identity of being non-gender specific.
Born on October 25th 1894 in Nantes France, she would later evacuate to Jersey in 1937, when the looming threat of Nazi Germany would soon erupt 2 years later in 1939 when they began their invasion European nations. When the war eventually met Jersey with the occupation of the channel Islands, Claude Cahun and many others had to endure hardship and struggle due to their heritage. Coming from Jewish decent, she was forced to hide her religion with her ability to speak German.
Her creative choice with surrealism is also highly prominent to people as due to the suppression of abstract art under the Nazis, her photographs exploring gender and identity can be seen as a rare act of creative resistance to the Nazis ideology of a conformed race where everyone looks the same.
Cahun photographed herself in self portraits in numerous outfits to explore her variety of Identities. This was because she enjoyed capturing the surrealist nature of how Femininity, Masculinity and identity can be explored, altered and challenged. This can be seen with the example image below where Cahun, for a first time viewer is hard to distinguish from male to female.
“Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”
Who Is Cindy Sherman?
(Cindy Sherman photographed her ideas on female stereotypes , through a variety of characters similar to Cahun).
Born in 1954, in the United States, Cindy Sherman is a Photographer known for her feminine characters and their identities she created to examine the how identity is constructed. Playing every role in the photoshoot – photographer, model, make-up artist, hairdresser and stylist.
Spanning over 4 decades, she took multiple photoshoots of her exploration into how the feminine identity is represented. Her most famous one was her untitled film stills, taken in 1977-80 she created photographs of her exploring herself in various settings resembling that of mid 20th Century B movies. Some of these include the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover and others.
“I wish I could treat every day as Halloween, and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character”.
For my plan to create a photo essay of documentative photography my Photoshoot plan is as such:
Where?
I Will photograph my series in the following locations:
My Nans house
Pig fields
Chicken coups
kitchen
Stool
Barn
Who?
Members of my family, employee’s and farm animals around the farm portraying their regular or challenging masculine and feminine roles:
My Nan
My Aunt
Cousin
Uncle
Employees in the kitchen
Farm animals
When?
Since I am staying at my Nans whilst my house is under going renovations, Over the span of the weeks I am staying there I will gather images in shoots.
What will I use?
Using props my family members will holding these include:
Masculinity & Femininity – Jobs associated to Gender + how they are challenged. My idea for this is to compose a series of images of my relatives in their Family-owned business, in a documentative style, capturing their roles around the farm. Put together, this not only captures their identities but goes to show a gender-diverse work place where both genders, take up jobs they aren’t stereotypically associated with, such as farm work for example.
Moodboard + Mind Map –
(Documentative style)
(Picture Essay – ‘Country Doctor’ by Eugene Smith, 1948)
My inspiration for this came from the Photographer Eugene Smith, who photographed a Picture essay called ‘Country Doctor’ in which he captured a story of a day in the life of a physician living in Rural America. This Inspired me for my idea of creating my own idea of a picture essay but having it consist of the identities of the Men and Women working within my relatives business.
(The ‘Country Doctor’)
Identity – Through full body shot portraits, Photographed with the subjects direct mode of address, I aim to show their Identities with their facial expressions, clothes and posture. By having them in a location and position natural to them, this ensures I capture their Identity accurately to be interpreted by the viewer.
Image Analysis:
Mood Board –
With these 2 Ideas in mind I will explore masculinity, femininity and Identity through one of them for my Photo assignment.
Femininity is generally defined as the attributes, behaviours and characteristics of women or girls. The most prominent example can be seen with the stereotypical traditional association of the colour pink, being highly regarded as a ‘feminine colour’.
(Barbie, 2023 – Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie – actors)
What is the definition of Masculinity?
Like Femininity, Masculinity is generally defined as the attributes, behaviours and characteristics of Men and boys. Using the same example, The colour blue is stereotypically associated to be a ‘masculine colour’.
(Donald Glover – Actor & Musician)
What is the definition of Identity?
Defined as being who or what a person or thing is. Identity can vary with culture, environment, gender, politics, and social aspects. Identities alter in different nations and regions having their own appearances and characteristic’s in their population.
An example cultural identity of this can be seen with Māori people from New Zealand. Being an Indigenous Polynesian population, in mainland New Zealand their identities can shown through their appearances, the most well-known one being their cultural tattoos, called Tā moko.
(With Men, It is more common to see the entire face, tattoo’ed as of tradition)
(With Women, The tattoo is usually on the lips and chin)
These further show examples of environmental identity, taking influence from culture and history with these tribal face tattoos dating back pre-European involvement with New Zealand. Additionally their Customs and traditions are associated with cultural identity. The Haka, a ceremonial dance that consists of vigorous movements of rhythmical foot stamping as well as expressive facial expressions, It is performed for various social functions associated with Māori culture.
Social identity, which is when people self-concept are shown through membership in groups, can be found with influential movements of fashion or behaviour. A notable social group associated to the UK are Roadmen. Dressed in all black, and known for being anti-sociable, they’re social appearance is recognisable for those reasons and can be found in urban areas such as London where large groups socially affiliate with each other territory.
With fashion, social identity can be shown through trends and styles. Styles can define someone’s identity with their appearance acting as a insight to their personality.
Styles such as Normcore, explore the deliberate choice of being unremarkable or unfashionable in casual looking clothes, yet creating a noticeable appearance through style.
Gorpcore, which focuses on wearing functional outdoors wear, is usually associated to clothes such as fleeces, Gore-Tex jackets and hiking trousers. Made popular through social media with Celebs such as Frank Ocean spotted or appearing at events wearing gorpcore brands, like Arc’teryx. This helped it become more popular in High fashion with brands such as Balenciaga getting involved with the style. Therefore leaving a large influence on the fashion influencers who build their identity on how they are dressed.
(Frank Ocean – Musician)
(A$AP Rocky – Musician)
Geographical Identity, which is a groups sense of attachment to their country/region can be shown locally with an example being the Island games. Showing Island recognition for a sporting event, and loyalty to its island through its players, this shows geographical Identity as the island is represented through its population showing their pride.
Identity can also be formed with upbringing, with parents, siblings and relatives playing factors of building personalities. When surrounded by people who you live with, you grow to adapt in your character from aspects of theirs, if you have a parent that shows confident or introverted characteristics, you are more likely to develop those traits. This can also be seen genetically with children being identical to their kids.
Culture wars are conflict’s between social groups, that have different cultural ideas, beliefs and philosophies. Commonly found where there is an overall disagreement on societal values, it is usually occurring in western countries where their democratic systems can generate issues and discussions with topics such as Abortion, multiculturalism, Sexuality or even values such as morality or lifestyle.
With the US having a vast geographical size, historical background and variation of demographics of different religions, cultures, morals etc it isn’t uncommon to see how it is the breeding grounds for culture wars to emerge from. The USA has seen numerous examples of them such as the prohibition era from 1920 to 1933, where many people campaigned and had the selling and consumption of alcohol banned. As a result however many states protested against it and eventually had the law revoked allowing alcohol to be unbanned. Another can be seen with the protests against the Vietnam war from 1955 – 1975 where many people saw it as an unnecessary war against communism to prove democratic supremacy and political power, which eventually ended after the loss of life was to high and political unrest back home in the US made it unpopular.
(Anti-booze campaigns held by pro-prohibition activists and campaigners)
(Anti-prohibitionists rallying to demand the laws removal)
(Anti-war protests in Washington DC, demonstrators displaying the iconic piece symbol and flag)
(Peaceful protestors placed flowers in the barrels of the rifles of national Guard soldiers outside the Pentagon)
(Soldiers in the conflict displayed their own acts of protest with slogans and art on their helmet covers)
Culture wars pose a real discussion about ethics and morality in society today, with the most recent example being over the choice to have an abortion in The US. At the start of the year, The US congress made the decision for abortion to be illegal in states that desired it. As a result since then, 24 states have made the decision to ban abortion. With pro-life events prior, many religious and anti-abortionist groups declared it was murder and held protests outside of abortion clinics. This however sparked outrage among other groups who opposed the idea of being forced into keeping the child as it meant in some cases rape victims or accidental pregnancies couldn’t have a right over their own body in deciding if they wanted to commit to having a baby.
An example of a culture war in Jersey can seen with the modern usage of the English language. Prior to Jersey becoming a crown dependency, the population spoke the language of Jèrriais, a Norman-French dialect that had evolved into its own dialect. Since the Victorian era, more and more British traveler’s settled in Jersey, establishing schools such as Victoria college, however with them came the english language which soon became increasingly the more common language. In schools, Students who spoke Jèrriais were punished for it, only speaking it at home to their parents and other relatives. Additionally many locations names were changed to make them more understandable for people who spoke english. With such examples being the parishes. St Jean’s became St John’s, St Pierre became St Peter and mainly the town centre St Hélyi became St Helier.
(Victoria College)
However with the modern day, more recognition of Jersey’s history and langauge is being fought for and represented by organisations such as Jersey heritage and the Jèrriais Organisation who educate through museums or in schools.
Recent examples of this fight can been with the states of Jersey installing their Jèrriais name and translations to their building and website, as well as Liberty Bus including the Jèrriais parish names on the side of its Buses.
(The governments name translated)
(Below the windows of the upper deck, the Jèrriais Parish names can be seen in a multi coloured line)
Culture wars, pose both positive and negative outcomes depending upon the cause. This is evident with campaigns to remove something negative upon society like laws against the rights of other groups of people, like slavery for example. When it can become negative however is when the decision is being forced upon the government to make decision for example with the case of abortion, it can result in unpopularity on both sides as one cultural group may not agree on it whilst the other one might.
