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Reframing the New Topographics
In 1975 the exhibition New Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape crystallized a new view of the American the sublime “American” vistas of Ansel Adams were replaced and subverted by images of a landscape inundated with banal symbols of humanity. Organized by William Jenkins for the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, New Topographics showcased such photographers as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke. Their pictures, illustrating the vernacular, human-made world of contemporary America, punctured the myth of the pristine, wild American landscape—and definitively changed the course of landscape photography. Reframing the New Topographics offers the first substantive analysis of this shift and the continuing influence of an exhibition that not only reshaped the look and subject matter of landscape photography, but also foreshadowed environmentalism’s expansion beyond the mere preservation of wilderness. The essays in this anthology will add an important new dimension to the studies of art history and visual culture.
- GenresPhotographyArt
264 pages, Hardcover
First published February 15, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2013
I gave it a positive review mostly for Mark Rawlinson's essay, though several others are good too. Rawlinson finally critiques the notion that these photos are 'cool', 'dry', 'objective', 'neutral'. You can't help but wonder what the other authors were thinking when they look at any of these images, or what Jenkins was thinking when he put the show together. To take it a step further, I'm surprised that Ansel Adams' work isn't described as 'cool' - it is perhaps the most distancing landscape photography imaginable. Admittedly, I hated Ansel Adams and his photographs from the 1st moment I saw one when I was 12 or 13, and I remember distinctly saying: anyone could make that look good. all you have to do is be standing there. "Who cares?" was the core of my reaction. I took it as an affront, a personal affront, to me: "Look where I've been. and now I'm rewarded for it."
That actually has very little to do with this book. Alas.
There's a good quote from Gohlke in the Jurovics essay: To me the photographs I was making argued that there are deeper impulses lurking somewhere in the functional surfaces and details of the grain elevators, and that subjective choice as well as objective necessity has a role in determining their form.
Dunaway's essay on ecological citizenship seems extremely strained. And her quoting of Ratcliff about Stephen Shore's photos offering "hope" and "acceptance" seem like real stretches. Just because there are people in his photos, that offers hope???
Dryansky's essay on landscape in Godard and Antonioni is right on point, and a valuable addition here.
Burnett's is a bit of a joke - it's basically just a cataloguing of modern photographers he likes that have land in their pictures. His analysis is embarassing. Re: some work by Hill and Bloom, he says "the series is strongly invested in the experience of loss. By intermixing new england woodland scenery with digitally crafted geometric forms, they stop time and narrative."
Really? That's all it took to "stop time"? His is the kind of writing that says what he thinks a picture is doing without saying HOW it is doing it.
He goes on "the absence of memory created by this simulation is brutal. this loss of time leads to an inability to experience loss."
This is empty thought and projection. It's fine if you say it's your own reaction, but don't tell me the image is "creating" the absence of memory or "leading to" any inability. You could just as easily that particular image expresses a wonderland of simultaneity and wonderful gadgets and how the changing seasons represent the hope of time passing.
Extremely lazy analysis.
But Mark Rawlinson's essay makes it all worthwhile. Also, the fact that there are many reproductions of the images discussed. A good resource for folks evaluating the original photos, but an extraordinarily uneven sampling of the scholarship surrounding this work.
That actually has very little to do with this book. Alas.
There's a good quote from Gohlke in the Jurovics essay: To me the photographs I was making argued that there are deeper impulses lurking somewhere in the functional surfaces and details of the grain elevators, and that subjective choice as well as objective necessity has a role in determining their form.
Dunaway's essay on ecological citizenship seems extremely strained. And her quoting of Ratcliff about Stephen Shore's photos offering "hope" and "acceptance" seem like real stretches. Just because there are people in his photos, that offers hope???
Dryansky's essay on landscape in Godard and Antonioni is right on point, and a valuable addition here.
Burnett's is a bit of a joke - it's basically just a cataloguing of modern photographers he likes that have land in their pictures. His analysis is embarassing. Re: some work by Hill and Bloom, he says "the series is strongly invested in the experience of loss. By intermixing new england woodland scenery with digitally crafted geometric forms, they stop time and narrative."
Really? That's all it took to "stop time"? His is the kind of writing that says what he thinks a picture is doing without saying HOW it is doing it.
He goes on "the absence of memory created by this simulation is brutal. this loss of time leads to an inability to experience loss."
This is empty thought and projection. It's fine if you say it's your own reaction, but don't tell me the image is "creating" the absence of memory or "leading to" any inability. You could just as easily that particular image expresses a wonderland of simultaneity and wonderful gadgets and how the changing seasons represent the hope of time passing.
Extremely lazy analysis.
But Mark Rawlinson's essay makes it all worthwhile. Also, the fact that there are many reproductions of the images discussed. A good resource for folks evaluating the original photos, but an extraordinarily uneven sampling of the scholarship surrounding this work.
February 26, 2012
A consistently thought provoking series of 8 academic essays on the New Topographics.
August 31, 2017
A good companion to the re-edited catalogue of the 1975 exhibition. The essays put the exhibition and its photographers into a deeper perspective. What is missing - and not really satisfied but the closing essay on "virtual images" - is an analysis of the legacy of this influent exhibition and group of photographers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews