Landscape New Topographics Landscape The Land is America “The land is to American art what mythology, religion and belief were to European art. From nearly the beginning of American art, painters made roman?c, idyllic pain?ngs of the land. Those portrayals con?nued for almost two centuries. They went up the Hudson River, west to Niagara Falls, across the great rivers of the heartland, over the West and her mountains un?l finally the land was so used-up by Americans (and ar?sts) that full-field abstrac?on was the only way leH. ” Tyler Green hKp://blogs.ar?nfo.com/modernartnotes/2010/01/the-new-new-topographics-at-la/ RALPH EARL American, 1751-1801 Looking East from Denny Hill, 1800 Alexandre Clausel (French, 1802–1884) Landscape near Troyes, ca. 1855 Daguerreotype; 10.5 x 14.6 cm (4 1/8 x 5 3/4 in.) George Eastman House, Rochester Victor Regnault (1810-78), View of the Seine at Sèvres, circa 1852, salt print, 31.4 by 42.8 cm Louis-Auguste Bisson (1814-1876) and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson (1826-1900). Mont Blanc, vu du jardin", 1858. Album Haute-Savoie. Le mont Blanc et ses glaciers. Souvenir du voyage de LL. MM. l'empereur et l'impératrice, par MM. Bisson frères photographes de Sa Majesté l'empereur. Afong Lai, Entrance to the Bankers' Glen, view looking down Yuen-foo River, China 1870. “A Harvest of Death.” This image was taken by Timothy H. O’Sullivan for Alexander Gardner circa july 5-6, 1863. hKp://www.geKysburgdaily.com/?p=13862 Ansel Adams Early Landscape Photography in America • Spirit Father of American Landscape • Nature before photography •Conservaonist •Zone System “The negave is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance.” jack Dykinga • Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist • Purpose of preservaon and protec?on • 4x5 digital camera • Internaonal League of Conservaon Photographers (www.ilcp.com), an organizaon of photographers working to protect threatened wild lands along the U.S.-Mexico border. “If you don’t adapt to the changing ?mes... I’m going in a different direc?on. I think more than ever, if you don’t have a personal vision, a dis?nc?ve type of photography, you’re doomed. For me, it’s really always been about the image. I’m increasingly aware of which ones are really good for me and which ones I really like. And now I’m able to just take the chance.” • Conservaon Carr CliHon •From 1978 to 2002, CliHon used a Toyo 4x5 field camera. Since 2002, the majority of his images have been made with the Pentax 67II using Fujichrome Velvia 50 and 100. AHer processing and edi?ng, these images are scanned and fine-tuned in Photoshop The feeling of discovery must have been very intoxicang. Originality wasn’t a problem. I truly envy the early photographers because it really is for me about wildness, solitude and discovery. I would gladly sacrifice the computer and digital world in a second for their place and ?me in history.” Tom Till David Muench • Doesn’t talk about his camera but about the land • Feels obligated to render his subject truthfully • Crucial part of his process it to teach about the wilderness • 4x5 and Canon digital – likes the interac?on with image in the field. Mitch Dobrowner The Storms • Mitch has fond memories of storms from childhood. • Passion today is landscapes in nas?est weather. Mitch Dobrowner New Topographics • Eastman House curator William jenkins – Rochester 1975 • Photographers who showed the docu-truth about how Americans were treang the land. Robert Adams (United States, b. 1937), Mobile Homes, jefferson County, Colorado, 1973. 10 Leading Photographers Robert Adams Lewis Baltz Bernd and Hilla Becher joe Deal Frank Gohlke Nicholas Nixon John SchoK Stephen Shore Henry Wessel jr. New Topographics The 1975 exhibi?on has come to be understood as marking a paradigm shiH. Roman?c idealizaon of the landscape gave way to a cooler appraisal, more engaged with the everyday built environment and more auned to the conceptual issues of the broader art field. Photographs in New Topographics emphasize aspects of the emerging, postwar American landscape: expansive parking lots detailed in Frank Gohlke’s "Landscape", Los Angeles (1974); subdevelopment tract housing documented by Robert Adams; idiosyncrac historic motels of Route 66 surveyed by john SchoK’s Route 66 Motels series; and industrial parks captured in Lewis Baltz’s New Industrial Parks series. hKp://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=34004 New Topographics Each photographer in the New Topographics exhibi?on was represented by 10 prints. All but Stephen Shore worked in black and white. The prints were in a 20 cm × 25 cm (8″×10″) format except for joe Deal (32 cm × 32 cm), Frank Gohlke (24 cm × 24 cm – close enough to 8”×10”), and the Bechers with typical European (for the ?me) 30 cm × 40 cm prints. Technically, half the photographers were working with 8″×10″ (20 cm × 25 cm) large format view cameras; those who were not were using either square medium format (Deal, Gohlke), or in the case of Lewis Baltz 35 mm Technical Pan, a slow and high-defini?on Kodak film that the photographer printed on 8″x10″ paper. Only SchoK and Wessel were using regular 35 mm cameras and film. New Topographics jenkins used the term TOPOGRAPHY to make a connec?on to such 19th century survey photographs as Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry jackson, who documented the geographical expedi?ons that were then opening up the West for white seKlement. hKp://places.designobserver.com/feature/new-and-old-topographics/12878/ Ed Ruscha • Photo books influenced curator William Jenkins • Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), a book of con?nuous photographs of a two and one half mile stretch of the 24 mile boulevard. • In 1973, following the model of Every Building on the Sunset Strip, he photographed the en?re length of Hollywood Boulevard with a motorized camera. Ed Ruscha Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 Ed Ruscha Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 Robert Adams • b. 1937 in Orange, Nj. • Guggenheim, MacArthur Fellowship, Hasselblad Award • Polio age 12 and suffered asthma. Moved to Denver. • B.A. University of Redlands, CA. • Ph.D. in English • Moved back to Colorado, began to photograph in 1964. Began full ?me in 1970. Robert Adams Ar)st Statement “Many have asked, poin?ng incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The ques?on sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue—why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like naonal parks?One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home, and that to do it we have to see the facts without blinking. We need to watch, for example, as an old woman, alone, is forced to carry her groceries in August heat over a fiHy acre parking lot; then we know, safe from the comfor?ng lies of profiteers, that we must begin again.Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no maer what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.” -R.A., 1974 Robert Adams Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968 Robert Adams Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968 Robert Adams Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968 Robert Adams Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968 Robert Adams (United States, b. 1937); "Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, " Robert Adams (United States, b. 1937). "Tract Housing, North Glenn and Thornton, Colorado," 1973. Lewis Baltz • b. 1945, Newport Beach, CA. • B.F.A. from San Francisco Art Ins?tute in 1969. • M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University. • NEA, Guggenheim grants Lewis Baltz (United States, b. 1945). North Wall, Automated Marine Internaonal, 1641 McGaw, Irvine 1974. Ansel Adams. Church, Taos Pueblo. Front view of entrance, "Church, Taos Pueblo Naonal Historic Landmark, New Mexico, 1942" Lewis Baltz (United States, b. 1945). "East Wall, McGaw Laboratories, 1821 Langley, Costa Mesa," from the series "New Industrial Parks," 1974. Lewis Baltz (United States, b. 1945). "South Corner, Riccar America Company, 3184 Pullman, Costa Mesa," from the series "New Industrial Parks," 1974. Lewis Baltz (United States, b. 1945). South wall, resources recovery systems, McGaw, Irvine, 1974. joe Deal • b. 1947 in Topeka, KS • B.F.A. in 1970 at Kansas City Art Ins?tute. • Granted conscien?ous-objector status and sent to Eastman House to work as guard and janitor. • M.F.A. at University of New Mexico in 1974. • Taught at University of Riverside and started photography program and helped found the CA Museum of Photography. • 1989 Dean of School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis. • 1999 Provost at the R.I. School of Design. • Died June, 2010. joe Deal (United States, b. 1947). "Un?tled View (Albuquerque)," 1974, printed 1975. joe Deal "Un?tled View (Albuquerque)," 1974, printed 1975. joe Deal (United States, b. 1947). "Un?tled View (Albuquerque)," 1974, printed 1975. joe Deal Sunset Beach, Ca. 1978 Joe Deal, “Backyard, Diamond Bar, California,” 1980 Bernd and Hilla Becher • Bernhard (Bernd) Becher b. 1931, d. 2007 • Hilla Becher, b. 1934 • know for their typologies of industrial buildings and structures • Bernd studied painng at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste StuKgart from 1953-1956. Then studied typography at Dusseldorfer Kunstakademie from 1959-61. • Hilla was a photographer’s appren?ce, studied at Dusseldorfer Kunstakademie, and did freelance on product. Bernd and Hilla Becher (Germany, 1931-2007 and b. 1934). "Pit Head, Bear Valley, Pennsylvania," 1974. Four gelan silver prints, each 12 x 16 inches.