Day 147: New Topographics

Bernd and Hill Becher's Cooling Towers, Marian Goodman Gallery

During An-My Lê's talk the DIA last week she casually mentioned a photography movement that I had never heard of, The New Topographics:

"New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" was the title of an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography. The show was curated by William Jenkins at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY) in 1975. It had a rippling effect on the whole medium and genre, not only in the USA, but in Europe too where generations of landscape photographers emulated the spirit and esthetic of the exhibition. Since 1975 "New Topographics" photographers such as Robert Adams, Bernd and Hill Becher, Frank Gohlke, and Stephen Shore have influenced photographic practices regarding landscape around the world.
from- Wikipedia

I'm grateful to know that the turn towards the human-altered landscape had a name. Apparently it is an area of photographic research that is getting updated contemporarily as well. Stay tuned...