What are New Topographics?
New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.
“New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was a ground-breaking exhibition of contemporary landscape photography held at the George Eastman House’s International Museum of Photography from October 1975 to February 1976.
What was the New Topographics 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.
Artist Reference – Stephen Shore
- Foreground vs background | Dominant features
- Composition | low horizon line | Square format
- Perspective and detail / cluttering
- Wide depth of field | Large Format Camera
- Colour | impact and relevance
- Nationalism vs mobility vs isolation
- Social commentary | The American Dream ?
- An appreciation of the formal elements : line, shape, form, texture, pattern, tone etc
Technical
The image was taken in natural daylight, and the lighting almost looks cold. The sun being o the left side of the image, gives off some distinct, hard-edged shadows. A slow shutter speed has been used as the cars on the left are slightly blurred while everything still is completely in focus. It was taken using a large format camera and it has a wide depth of field.
Visual
In the image, there are a lot of vertical and horizontal lines which contribute to the rule of thirds.
Conceptual
The image looks as if it is leading the viewer to the mountains, indicating to get out of the busy area.
My Images
These are some of the photos I took on the walk we did around La Collette. For these images, I turned the contrast up and lowered the exposure, while increasing the clarity to make sure I still got a detailed sky in the background.
