Contemporary Thought In Photography: New Topographics: Man-Altered Landscapes, Systems Method, and Serial Images

In Greg Foster-Rice's "Systems Everywhere", the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape was broken down and analyzed. In the 1960's and 1970's, photographs (and art in general) took a turn from the "aesthetic formalism" and became more about the experience one encounters in the production and viewing of the art pieces. The art as an object lost its basis, as the method for the creation of the images became more noteworthy. This method of creation was based of of a biologist's definition of what systems theory is: a "complex phenomena cannot be reduced to the discrete properties of their various parts, but must be understood according to the arrangement of and relations between the parts that create a whole." This is the underlying theme to the three defining factors (serial, visual arrangement, and emblematic of system as a whole) of the New Topographic artists, which I will discuss later on.

The New Topographics displayed photographs of Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore, and five others, with each artists displaying work that relayed a similar message: we are destroying our environment. In contrast to these exhibition prints, photographs from the 19th century began to show the industrial strength of man in coordination with nature. As Foster-Rice points out, photographs then were taken of railroads from above, displaying their visual similarities to river bends, and the organic nature surrounding it. Any inkling to destruction was reduced to the frame in which the photograph was taken. There were no reverberating, widespread affects to be shown in these photographs. It was all about publicity for the good that man was doing and how it was to better the lives of America's citizens. People bought it. However, this expansion and increased production of roads, towns, interstates, etc., started to catch people's attention after awhile. This is where the New Topographics exhibition comes in. In the '60s and '70s, post WWII America, subdivisions began to go up off interstates, meaning mass amounts of repeating blueprint houses/trailers/nuketown-looking homes and a complete dependency on cars for any sort of transportation. This expansion drastically changed how some businesses functioned. Places along these interstates that relied heavily on passersby now became closed because everybody lived "just down the road" and the need to stop at the motel for the night was lost. These new buildings were build cheaply and were not constructed for archival purposes. Some developments were never finished, with buildings left in a half built, ruined state. As Foster-Rice put it, we were creating structures that were to rise into ruin before they were built, versus having fallen to ruin after their use. We were creating for the sake of creation, pocketing the profits, and moving on to the next subdivision blueprints. This is where the New Topographic artists come in.

Photographers such as Joe Deal and Robert Adams saw this expansion as that of a destructive nature (which it was), and began photographing these building sites. In general, they created photographs that incorporated all three parts of the systems method of these artists: serial images, a visual arrangement (versus aesthetic composition), and photographs emblematic of the system as a whole. The serial, which is not a series, is the creation of images where there is no visual hierarchy. One photograph is not more important than another, and no photograph stands out visually more than another. They are simply a set with common denominators (whereas a series would be a continuation of an idea, event, emotion, etc). In focusing on a visual arrangement instead of an aesthetic composition, photography actually played on its strongest point: becoming a true visual record of what was in front of the lens. Though the photographer was still selecting what to be cropped and the angle of view and where they photographed and how to expose, because of its seriality, this all stayed relatively neutral. For instance, Deal photographed downward, eliminating the horizon line and flattening out his images. His prints were all low contrast were well within the serial method. Without an aesthetic influence to create the work, the photographs became very accurate depictions of what they represented. They became, to an extent, what Hal Foster would consider "archival", in his piece "The Archive". The photographs were more similar to the legislative and institutive qualities that Foster named as archival standards in opposition to having destructive and transgressive qualities. I may be incorrect, but I understood the latter qualities to be more of an aesthetic nature, versus the former qualities of a more serial nature. In this inference, the New Topographic would come across as an archival exhibition.

The last part of the three categories is the photographs' incorporation of the system as a whole. Each part of the each photograph does not stand alone, but rather, is influenced and given meaning by its surrounding parts and subsequently, its surrounding photographs. They all link to each other and as a whole, create a strong, meaningful body of work. This would be the epitome of the systematic or procedural method of creating something (as biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy had described it), with these photographs creating each other, and having been created not with aesthetics, but with thought and purpose for visual communication.

One part I found a bit controversial in "Systems Everywhere" was the statement of how photography was a master at this new "systems method" and was seen as the way to accurately and fully convey this landscape, not as sublime painters did with a dramatized framed scene, but with open ended borders on the photographs, and a straightforward view. Its almost as if photography visualizes driving down the unfinished Jersey Turnpike, as Tony Smith had said, where it cannot be fully considered art, but the experience of moving through its environment becomes something more powerful than any art piece. This all made sense to me, and maybe it was just a comparison between two different types of photography, but before this statement of affirmation of photography in this usage, Ansel Adams's f/64 club was brought up. These prints were compared directly to the sublime painting, being all about the perfection of the landscape within the frame, and the posterchildren of what America looks like. Adams' prints do not have the "move through the environment and past the photographic frame" feel, so this just seemed a contrast to the statement of photography being able to best fit the systems method of creating these "unbiased" pieces of information.

Somebody who has created a similar style of work to those of the New Topographics, would be Roni Horn. In three of her projects, Cabinet Of (2001), This Is Me, This Is You (1999-2000), and You Are The Weather (1994-1995), the styles and methods of the New Topographics artists is almost directly emulated, albeit a different subject matter is used. All three works are of faces, and heavily use the three parts: serial method, visual arrangement, and emblematic of a system as a whole. She either grids her photographs, or lines them up, each image playing simultaneously off of the previous and the next. There is no visual hierarchy, (though in You Are The Weather, there is change in saturation and contrast, but it happens in such a pattern, that the pattern is what creates the seriality) and each project is generally printed in the same style and with the same contrast/color saturation/framing. Her works are a study of the body of images as a whole, how they all play off of one another to create a larger meaning and interpretation of the body of work.