Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123
Results 21 to 23 of 23

Thread: Current landscape photographers breaking new ground.

  1. #21

    Join Date
    Jan 2002
    Posts
    12

    Current landscape photographers breaking new ground.

    It takes one to know one, Domenico.

  2. #22

    Join Date
    Mar 1998
    Posts
    1,972

    Current landscape photographers breaking new ground.

    The "New Topographics" vision is defined as looking at the western Amercan landscape as it really is today (actually this began about thirty years ago) which is something other than the mythologized, romanticized, and therefore pristine ground seen in photos made inthe 1930s and 40s by such greats as Ansel Adams and the old (not the current) National Geographic school and the people who copied them. Photographers like Robert Adams , Wiliam Klett, Richard Misrach, Stephen Shore look at that same ground and see man's hand all over it. there is an enviromentalist polemic to both the grandview and the N.T. view of the west, but all of the photographers who were lumped under the "NT" banner have moved on in their careers and in their visions of the world and in some cases can now barely be identified with one another. what sprang from the New Topographics ideology. One of the ripples produced by the NT school came ashore in Germany The Bechlers (I think that is the correct spelling) and their students such as A. Gursky, etc. form what is known as"new Objectivism." which takes as it's subjects the man made enviroments.This wave is just beginning to build in adherents and in five or more years will produce something new.

    I find the most interesting easily "graspable at first glance" landscape and cityscape work being done these days is by jack Dykinga and Joel Meyerwitz. there are others who are producing more challenging work -- i just a lot of it at a preview of the 2002 Fotofest auction (http://www.fotofest.org) and doubtless there will also be al ot of it at the AIPAD meeting in NYC thismonth. Some of the work being produced by Latin American photographers is just stunning in it's freshness, especially the work produced by the best of the Cuban photographers.

    What all of these ;movements tell me is that when photographers get together in a real space and over a period of time and talk to each other and share ideas and questions that real progress and pushingthe envelope is truly possible. The myth of the photographer as a lone gunslinger is as false as the myth of cats walking by themselves, and much more pernicious we don't live in isolation tanks , why can it be expected that we might grow creatively without interaction with each other? i wish foriums like this really made real communities of artists but more and more I find that to be a hollow lie. We talk and talk and talk and we sometimes look at bad or at best reduced reproductions of the work we do, but we never see the thing itselfwe never hear those pauses between thoughts or get the added meaning that a grimace or a narrowed squint, or a grin allows. it just isn't real.

  3. #23

    Current landscape photographers breaking new ground.

    Ellis, You mean Mark Klett and it is spelled Becher (I'm looking at 3 of their books right now.) You have a great point about virtual community. It is a little weird and very hard to really know the participants and their work. But it's a fabulous way to meet people when you actually go to AIPAD, FotoFest, FotoFusion, or SPE and hear or see a name that already you know so well from a forum like this. Hope to run into some of you at AIPAD on Saturday and at the SPE National Conference in Las Vegas, March 21-24. (Society for Photographic Education, see www.spenational.org)

    Cheers,

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 36
    Last Post: 1-Mar-2008, 04:26
  2. British Landscape Photographers
    By Lisa Bevis in forum On Photography
    Replies: 43
    Last Post: 3-Dec-2007, 13:03
  3. procedural question for landscape photographers
    By Mark Sampson in forum Style & Technique
    Replies: 42
    Last Post: 15-Aug-2005, 17:04
  4. An invitation to landscape photographers
    By paulr in forum Announcements
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 14-Dec-2004, 22:23
  5. any current exhibits in N. IL?
    By Wayne in forum Resources
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 15-Mar-2004, 07:33

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •