Contemporary Responses to the Land_Lecture Notes

8/3/2019 Contemporary Responses to the Land_Lecture Notes

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-today relationship with land is not straight forward-so landscape is not a neutral or natural space

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-by late 60s and early 70s many artists specifically in America wereuncomfortable with a straight forward objectification of the land

-Photography turned into exploration of human presence-"New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" was anexhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography(curated by William Jenkins in 1975)

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- seemingly neutral approach to depict the ordinary landscapes that surroundus

-"The pictures were stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentiallytopographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but

eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion,." "[...] rigorouspurity, deadpan humor and a casual disregard for the importance of theimages. (Jenkins (curator))

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-Stephen Shore was heavily influenced by Conceptualism and Minimalism-embarked on a series of cross-country trips throughout the United Statespursuing the work that would become his influential book UncommonPlaces (1982)

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-Shores image depicts a vacationing family enjoying a day by the river inYosemite National Park

-his image makes no effort to disguise human presence, instead it shows howYosemite has become place for enjoyment and relaxation-Unlike Ansel Adams photograph, Shore has chosen to reveal the lack ofwilderness-Shores emphasis on the common and deadpan quality of the scene

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-Image questions the tradition of photographing landscape-Where is the wild landscape of Ansel Adams? in Shores case it has justbecome an image, a representation

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-similar techniques of New Topographics: Joel Sternfeld-together with Stephan Shore, Joel Sternfeld is one of the most importantrepresentatives of New Color Photography, which discovered color for artphotography in the 1970s

-American Prospects (1987) is Sternfeld's most known book and explores theirony of human-altered landscapes in the United States

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-another Topograhic photographer Lewis Baltz-portrayed the spread of suburbia and the disappearance of landscape

-Baltz images describe the architecture of the human landscape, offices,factories, and parking lots-His pictures are reflection of control, power, and influence by human beingsover land-captured the anonymity and the relationships between inhabitation,settlement, and anonymity

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-often also depicting structural details of the buildings and monotony of man-made

-contrast and geometry very important-attention to surface texture and lifeless subject matter

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-another Topographic Photographer: Robert Adams-best known for his series of photographs investigating urban encroachmenton the landscape of the American West-issues of pollution and disappearance of the natural and ideas of a controlled,structured natural environment

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-city below sprawls out to the grey horizon-despair with man's destruction of natural or what has been until recentlycalled wilderness of American West

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-Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher were German artists working as acollaborative duo

-best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies,of industrial buildings and structures- project of systematically photographing industrial structures water towers,blast furnaces, gas tanks, mine heads, grain elevators and the like- objective and scientific character of their project and 'straight' aesthetics

following the movement of Neue Sachlickeit or The New Objectivity

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-Neue Sachlichkeit: Sachlichkeit should be understood by its root, Sach,meaning "thing", "fact", "subject", or "object." Sachlich could be best

understood as "factual", "matter-of-fact", "impartial", "practical", or "precise";Neue Sachlichkeit "matter-of-factness

-their black-and-white images are all taken in the same clinical manner

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-Ed Burtynsky: influneced by the new Topographics but also by notions of thesublime

-large-scale depictions of global industrial landscapes-interested in the contemporary manufactured landscape, photographing oilfileds, quarries, open-pit mines, oil, transportation, silicon, metal and tyrewaste

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- in his oil field photographs, the man-made landscape is given over entirely toindustry

-image appears to be taken a neutral stance but it carries Burtynskisubjective opinion about the ecological consequences of our consumerism--Burtynsky takes on the deadpan style but displays his subject matter asobjective evidence of the consequences of our contemporary lives-We are surrounded by all kinds of consumer goods, and yet we areprofoundly detached from the sources of those things. Our lifestyles are madepossible by industries all around the world, but we take them for granted as

the background to our existence. I feel that by showing those places that arenormally outside our experience, but very much part of our everyday lives, Ican add to our understanding of who we are and what we are doing. Ed

Burtunsky (2009)

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- David Maisel photographing The Great Salt Lake area in northwestern Utah- lakes exceptional richness in five major elements (sodium, magnesium,potassium, chloride, and sulfate)-evaporation ponds that are commercially operated to extract salts andminerals for industrial use

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-but included in series also images that store aging chemical weapon andchemical bacterias

-viewer does not know which of these colors arises from naturally occurringelements or organic matter and which are deadly toxins created from man-made processes

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-Richard Misrach interested in sites of aftermath of landscapes devastationand mans destruction of natural sources

-best known for his project Bravo 20 (published in 1990)- Bravo 20 military area used for illegally testing high-explosive bombs on anenormous expanse of public land near Fallon, Nevada

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-remarkable exploration of the military's treatment of the American West-The photographs capture both the natural beauty and the manmadedevastation unique to this remote Nevada landscape- human activity of bombing in details of burst shells, bombed-out buses,

automobile hulls and also affect on life-stock of animal

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-notion of industrial structures and power also present in John Davies work-documented aspects of industrial and urban landscape of Britain-publication "A Green & Pleasant Land (1987)-power of industry but natural landscape seems exhausted- landscape and sky denuded of any sense of life or energy-English picturesque countryside and the myth of Arcadia has all butdisappeared

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-Keith Arnatt was following a long-established scenic route, the Wye Valley, inhis seriesA.O.N.B. of 19821984

-as the title suggests, the photographs were taken around England in areasspecially designated for their striking landscapes-however, the beauty of a place usually forms the background for the images-an emphasis on the mundane, the overlooked, the nondescript-travesty of romantic landscape- Arnatt contrasts grandeur and banality

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-series explores what Arnatt called the conjunction of beauty and banality-real focus is on something unexpectedly everyday in the foreground, forexample a pile of rubbish or oil barrel

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-Walter Niedermayer interested in humans interaction with the land- interested in areas of retreat, fantasy places for fun and holidays-examines the tourist industry and our desire/fantasy of wilderness

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-Southam refers to tradition of picturesque idyll in England and thedisappearance of it

-patient observation of changes at a single location over many months oryears observing the balance between nature and man's intervention andtraces cycles of decay and renewal

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- Justine Kurland aligns herself with efforts of its 19th-century landscapephotographers and painters of the American West as an Arcadian Paradise or

Garden of Eden- represents these people living in harmony with nature

-documents a land of peaceful and self-contained agrarian communities insearch of rural utopia

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-Nieweg produces images of semi-rural cultivated landscape near herhometown of Bielefeldt in Germany

-systematic choice of subject of agricultural fields or allotments and gardensand forensic approach to landscape--follows the theme of Neue Sachlichkeit which we discussed in case ofBechers--so also deadpan aesthetic--signature clarity of vision, diffused light of overcast sky

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-she is interested in the interplay between human and nature- interplay between purposeful human planning and the unpredictable

instinctive growth of the natural- Ideas of the linear organization of the land in forms of crops and plough

furrows

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-contemporary environment as a witness to areas of conflict-contemporary (fine-art) war photography has taken anti-reportage stance,remaining out of the action and arriving after the decisive moment- idea of aftermath as a slowing-down making of image

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- Sophie Ristelhueber over her career has photographed the repetition ofdestruction of nature and civilisation

-photographed the 1st Gulf War from 1991, working mainly in Kuwait makingaerial photographs of the traces of bombings and troop movement-she draws attention to the scars and traces we leave behind

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- Simon Norfolks photographs of Afghanistan some of the best-known imagesto discuss the idea of aftermath photography

-published book in 2003 Afghanistan Chronotopia: Landscapes of theDestruction of Afghanistan

Documents

Contemporary Responses to the Land_Lecture Notes