Everyone even slightly interested in the History of Photography and especially here in the United States will come across what is called ‘New Topographics’. This movement in photographic art started here in the 70s and is named after an exhibition held in 1975 in the International Museum of Photography: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.
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| Stephen Shore, 2nd Street and South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, August 22, 1974 |
Mostly featuring the work of American
photographers it represents a new approach to landscape photography where the
banal, the uniform, suburbs, industrial development, roads become the main
photographic subject. Far away
from the imagery of grandiose American nature and far away from ‘decisive
moment’ social documentary, this movement is about finding aesthetic and hidden
beauty in the dull, the boring, the empty. It’s about depicting what we see
everyday without even looking, what appears in our peripheral vision at a crossroad,
on the side of a street without us even noticing. But the impact and the
influence that this movement has on today’s photography also seems to express
the fact that these (at the time surprising) landscape images also convey a
political message questioning ‘man alterations’ on nature.
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| Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1973 |
Anyway my objective is not to retrace the
history of the movement or of this specific exhibition, which is by the way currently
traveling through Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Spain – unfortunately I missed
it as it was in San Francisco just before I arrived…)
But as I explore the images and approaches that define today’s contemporary
photography I couldn’t avoid noticing the strong influence of such a movement
on young photographers and I guess especially in America. In addition to the undeniable aesthetic of these
photographs I started to understand their main value through the interesting
testimony they leave us. Depicting things as they are forces us to see things
as they really are, to better look around us and question our relationship to
our environment.
And as I explored the American environment
through ‘Topographics’ photographs I started to wonder what my own country
looks like through the lens of ‘Topographics’ photographers? What do the French
altered landscapes look like?
So here are some answers from a girl freshly arrived in the United States
looking back at the environment where she grew up.
Mission
photographique de la DATAR
The first and amazingly interesting example
of the American New Topographics’ influence on French photography is certainly
the project commissioned in 1984 by the DATAR (a French governmental delegation
dedicated to town and country planning and regional activities). With the
objective of representing the French landscape in the 80s, the DATAR first commissioned
12 photographers to travel through France and document its environment. The
project grew and it was finally 28 photographers, French and foreign, unknown
and famous who created an in depth photographic archive of French landscapes.
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| Gabriele Basilico, France, 1984-1985 |
With images from photographers such as
Joseph Koudelka, Lewis Baltz, Gabriele Basilico, Robert Doisneau or Raymond Depardon, this mission
is probably the starting point of new European landscape photography. Each
photographer expressed his personal engagement with the territory with his own
photographic style and explored new aesthetic and emotional dimensions of French landscape photography.
Here is a picture of the initial team. If
you’re interested in more portraits of the photographers in 1984, you can find
some here: despatin.gobeli.free.fr
The book published in 1989 is now a
collectible.
Unfortunately I was unable to recall many images
of the project and the ones I found usually have no title, no indication of the
location and no author but they offer a good seen of this historical
photographic project.
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