Does it have to say anything?

[Drew Wiley]

koh - I don't know where you get impressions like that. Where are those alleged art history teachers getting their own version of the story, in the back of some
1970's Sears Roebuck catalog? Cause that "New Topographics" thing was already starting to get monotonous half a century ago. Hardly new, and hardly dominant
ever. There was some interesting stuff. I saw a lot of it when some of the major players were nearly eating out of a dumspter doing that starving artist career.
A few did make it; some I can't even remember. I could care less. I photograph with my eyes and not according to some pigeonholed stereotype about what I'm "supposed" to be doing.

[Corran]

An interesting thread and something I've thought about many times.

I've learned more by sitting down and talking with artists and art professors (of all genres), often while viewing art at galleries or even student work, and discussed what was successful and what isn't, and why, from each other's viewpoints. It's fascinating and enlightening. If you aren't getting that from your professors at school that's not good. Some professors (and even more online "experts") will simply tell you what is good and what's not, from their viewpoint, and act as if everyone else is wrong. Take koh303 for example, debasing all of landscape photography like he knows better than anyone else about what is "good photography." I would stay away from such people and broad generalizations.

Anyway, I don't think anyone can answer your question except yourself.

[Lenny Eiger]

Well - you should start taking more history of photography classes, and i am guessing you will if you are not yet a 4th year student, so you still have to learn and hear about all kinds of stuff. That said, format has naught to do with what is being photographed.

Ansel adams is boring and only referenced as backing for something else, if ever in art school. New topographics on the other hand is the basis for about 90% of all work currently being made and shown in galleries showing photography. The canonical US/American version of history of photography is pretty aggressive about who it does and does not include.

Ansel Adams aside, it seems the whole idea of the New Topographics was to be boring. Post-modernism insists that photographs have no emotional content whatsoever, and rejects all that went before as "tainted". Many have said is is the essence of "anti-art". If you want to look at why people are disinterested in going to a gallery or a museum these days (to look at Photography), one need look no further. I have certainly stopped myself.

All great Art looks back at what went before, appreciates it and moves forward. Sometimes there is a nod... Except these bozos. I read a lot of the books about this subject, to understand what they are after. They make a few good points. I read Roland Barthes, was summarily unimpressed (that's as polite as I can get it), read Michael Fried gushing about his friend Jeff Wall who spent $200,000 to take a picture of a woman walking across the room with a sock in her hand, in the most boring way possible, not even looking at the camera. He timed it perfectly so the window to the bay was able to be seen - but wait, he had to photoshop it in just like everyone else. Anyone who knew how to do this would just have taken two different exposures... apparently there's a price to pay for rejecting all previous knowledge.

I can appreciate the inclusion of mental constructs in what one is doing vs just pointing the camera at something pretty. When you go to the place where everything is all about the concept with no emotional context, you lose everyone who would look at your work, except someone else schooled in the drivel. No one is interested in sterility... quite the contrary. They are usually interested in something deep (that's a word for lots of emotion) they haven't noticed before... they want to connect. There is enough disconnection about these days, without this....

[RodinalDuchamp]

Is the general consensus that new topographic is not "in" anymore? Is that a bad thing?

Why was it considered boring as some have mentioned? I ask because Robert Adams is often mentioned in this "school" or movement and he is very influential to me. So I guess it's surprising to hear.

Henry Wessel is mentioned too.

[Drew Wiley]

Anyone who lumps Rbt Adams into that alleged school looks at only the subject matter superficially and not his printing style (a predictable error when one analyzes web images or book reproductions). One more flaw in the pigeonholing mentality.

[RodinalDuchamp]

[Michael R]

Is the general consensus that new topographic is not "in" anymore? Is that a bad thing?

Why was it considered boring as some have mentioned? I ask because Robert Adams is often mentioned in this "school" or movement and he is very influential to me. So I guess it's surprising to hear.

Henry Wessel is mentioned too.

I strongly suggest you learn as much about photography and other visual artforms as you can, and decide for yourself. I would also caution that generalization regarding any movement or group can be problematic. The New Topographics is as good an example as any in that regard. Within that "movement" (even within the original exhibit) there is a rather wide variety of styles - different subjects, very different visual approaches. From a printing and technical perspective it is also a very diverse group (everything from 35mm copy films to LF contact prints to LF colour work). Try to find a copy of New Topographics. It's an excellent book about the original exhibition and photographs if you are interested.

[Mark Sawyer]

Anyone who lumps Rbt Adams into that alleged school looks at only the subject matter superficially and not his printing style (a predictable error when one analyzes web images or book reproductions). One more flaw in the pigeonholing mentality.

It's largely a matter of editing/curating. Adams was one of the few photographers in the 1975 New Topographics exhibition that defined the style, (which was basically eschewing style and artistry for a simpler visual cataloging of the landscape), and the selected Adams photographs fit into that niche very well. At the same time he was making photographs later included in Summer Nights that fit a completely different approach, dark, moody, and nostalgic. And his 1982 Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values is arguably a refutation of the New Topographics movement.

[Kirk Gittings]

But, this goes to the age old question of what exactly is new? And honestly, does it matter if any good? Maybe for the artist or starving student or advancing the world of art, but if it is art to the originator then is that enough? If it is good to them, even when they claim and feel it is underwhelming, won't this feeling of it being never good enough drive them more and more.

To be clear these questions are asked upon viewing a piece of art as part of the audience-not its creator. I'm not concerned with whether its new because nothing is really new. I'm more interested in whether it's any good. Of course it matters to me whether the art I am viewing is any good. This is the opposite of what most of my academic friends do.

[Lenny Eiger]

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford