New Topography is a new point on photography’s map. Though this type of imagery, both documentary and art, has been in practice for a while, even instances have been noted since before the concept of art systems was conceived, such as photographer William Henry Jackson, looking at it now we can examine it in a new context the exceeds the art function. As curator Willoughby Sharp mentions there is a connection between the art and the social life. I understood this as being a connection, maybe interaction would be a better word, between humanity and the “natural” environment, as well as our modern or contemporary perception of what nature is. Is nature now everything that is involved in it? Are our cities and creations now one with nature in that they have the same reflection of naturality by definition? Granted the definition of nature is non-human creations but they are natural to us now. It would be absurd to consider a landscape or nature without some sort of man-made existence in it.
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| William Henry Jackson |
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| Ansel Adams |
System art and system theory involve multiple ideals, many different from each other and between artists, but one consistent ideal is in the serial work, the single connected point in the project that represents the intentions and outcome of a project. In serial work there is no hierarchy. From the concept, to the image, to the presentation of the work everything is equal and just as important as the others. Though for many artists the presentation was not as different from traditional approaches to presentation, other than the Becher’s and few others, but it was mainly in the frame that this point struck out in its importance. This familiar imagery of the vernacular is new in topography in that we are not viewing distant landscapes of the national parks or the uninhabited West; we are looking at our cities the connection land between our cities and our involvement within both of these. We are being tied into the images, familiar landscapes, that we experience everyday. The locations of these images are meaningless in that we do not need to know the location of the photograph because they are location-less. Even images of visually known cities and places become un-map-able (each way I write this word it looks weird so sorry…) due to their consistency among other cities and areas. So long is the view of the unknown landscape where we are looking at an area that is distinct in its location such as images by Ansel Adams. We are taking a psychological and sociological perspective and intertwining it with art.
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| Robert Frank |
These photographers, Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, examine various conceptions, but are looking into the same core interest. Through this topographic representation the interest is not in one single subject but the community in the subject, the subject being the image/print itself. Robert Frank’s image of
Mobile Home’s eliminates the frames edges as the ending point of the perspective. Frank in this manner is not limiting the viewer from what is being shown he is bringing up front the continuous and unending image, the image being our world and the subject being what he framed in his camera. Frank also examines and questions the subject by what is natural and unnatural through his exposure. Papageorge mentions Frank’s light as equivalency of differentiation, every photograph has the same quality of light. In this Papageorge is commenting on Frank’s continuous clarity between the final, presented prints as being involved in no hierarchy. This is an important and true point, but there is another key feature that this equivalency pertains: the equivalency between perceived subjects in the frame. The consistency in lightness between the natural and human aspect are similar in that Frank is revealing or questioning this connection.
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| Lewis Batz |
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| Stephen Shore |
Two other photographers who draw upon this questioning of the landscape or man-altered landscape, Minor White and the Becher’s, use vantage point and perspective to achieve a look that gives the viewer no entry point or location of the image. It is not simply about the disinterest for the viewer to want or know how to locate themselves in the frame, but to force the viewer to be an outsider looking in on their world. We are forced to examine each area as if it is not familiar to us or a part of our world, when we know that it is. This is all conceived in the process of framing. More traditional forms of framing for topography is used in referring the subject to use up all portions of the frame from the center to the edges, but, like I stated earlier, now the frame is simply a barrier that the viewer must get overcome. Take for instance image c1, bellow, the focus is on the street light, yet it is not as important as the cracked road that surrounds it or the scattered trees and houses in the background, or the foggy sky and frozen farm land. The scene is just as much a part of the surround environments that are not visible in the image, and it is understood that the non-visual surroundings mimic that of what is visual. Tone, for example, becomes an important factor in how one reads an image from the intended subject to what is considered open space. In c1 the tone of the asphalt is similar to that of the non-snow covered field, the trees in the background to that of the houses around them, these all eliminate the meanings from one to the other incorporating everything not merely as equal, but rather it is for the viewer to decide its meaning and concern or lack of. New topography for me falls down to not only what the photographer intends, they have control as to how the image will appear visually, but to how the viewer interprets and sees the image.
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| c1 |
Hal Foster’s response is going to be short. Foster’s piece on The Archive connects to the new topographies in a way of connecting the past and present and relying on the photographer and viewer as deciphering their own meaning and judgment. Foster examines in this essay the relevance in art, literature and objects of the past for their pertinence in the present. Archives “are recalcitrantly material, fragmentary rather than fungible and as such they call out for human interpretation rather than mechanical reprocessing.” I feel that in this Foster is describing archives as objects and theories that have been lost to time and abandoned but not destroyed. These objects are everywhere and were of importance but now they faded into the environment and their importance is for us to decide instead of calculated reasoning’s for the outcome of the object. These artists are re-identifying these archives to the modern time and concept brings back to light their prolonged intention and reinstating it with the artists own. This form of art relies on the openness in all aspects of the piece instead of it being constrained to a specific forum or concept. It draws upon the individual for meaning and recognition as well as power, and in doing so with these new and variety of concepts and inputs about the archive it begins to shift form and meaning in an unending way. This transformation is due to the fact that everyone can conceive his or her own ideas and concepts of the piece. There are no guidelines or constraints to limit ones thoughts. This archive art I feel is limited in many ways to specific mediums, and I can’t see its potency in photography other than through history images or reconsidering our decisions but not being able to alter them. However this archive has opened many new mapping points drawing on maps from the past and connecting them to our modern times, as well as evolving the map to be a three-dimensional map in that we are mapping on various levels of each other, such as physical or topographic map, and re-examining mapped points in different manners such as completely turning mapped points up side down to look at them in new ways and reconsider their factual points on our said map.
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| Nikki S. Lee |
The two photographers I feel reference procedure in the best manner as it referencing continuous subject matter are Nikki S Lee and Winston Link. Lee transforms herself into identities and social characteristics of various natures and submerges herself into the society to identify the unimportant separation created through race, interest, age, and environment. By transforming into the subculture of the subject she, in considering all her projects as one, is defining herself as belonging to nowhere and everywhere. She is ridiculing all societies as segregating from each other based of subtle and insignificant differences. Each society is going to be different from another but these subcultures and cultures are not, and through her consistent and involved approach in each of them she is visually and literally showing us that anyone can be anyone and that we are all virtually the same.
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| Winston Link |
Weston Link on the more literal side is using procedure to literally show the same subject in each image: a train. This type of procedure, I feel, does not have any sub-context to its meaning, but that he is showing us the capability of variety of a subject through different perspectives, uses and interaction with the environment around itself. I guess on a insignificant sublevel there can be a context that it refers to, but I don’t know if it is true. These trains possibly can be, like Nikki Lee, a connecting point of environments and people. That one single object can reference multiple societies and transportation to and from these societies. Like Lee, simply being an Asian women, these images show just a train, but it is in thinking about the message and idea of the intention of Lee or Link’s train where the power and context arises.
So in regards to the chart from last week I have added this weeks terms, exagerated a little, but here it is:
So in my mind I could not locate in a percise location these two terms in the mapping, NT and Archive, but its plausable, right? I mean Archive totally agrees and also is completely disconcerned with everything. And the New Topographies are not referencing a specific time and place thought they are, they are narrating our time and they are simply images of environments, I placed the topography in this area because in theory they are projections of landscapes onto the medium of photography and well they are images telling us things, but we have to figure that out for ourselves. I am pretty sure this is wrong but it was fun destroying this frustrating and confusing chart!!! Have a nice week.
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