RESEARCH

Bullet points on how my research has evolved.
(Far too much to write, could bore the pants off some)

So this is where it all began, buying this book approximately 2 years ago.
Seductively engaging images.
1974
Mainly black & white images.

Ten photographers:

Lewis Baltz - 35mm
Henry Wessel Jr - 35mm

Stephen Shore - colour, Large format

Robert Adams - medium format
Joe Deal - medium format
Frank Gohlke - medium format

Bernd & Hilla Becher - large format
Nicholas Nixon - large format
John Schott - large format

The style of the New Topographics;

'The style of living'
'Determinist'
'Purged of sentimentality & subjectivity'
'Neutral & unemphatic'
'Ugly & ordinary'
'Connoisseurship of the everyday'

Quote by Robert Adams;

"What I tried to do in the New West... was to include the objects we'd brought to the landscape and which by common consent are the most ugly, but also suggest that light can transform even grotesque, inhuman things into mysteries worthy of attention."

Second book.
Mostly colour images
More up to date 2000 and on.
A myriad of photographers with a plethora of subject matter.

More a set of ten books, but one particular I just can't seem to put down, which is The New Industrial parks.
All black and white images.










After reading the New Topographics book, well - flicking through the images I decided to research the photographers, the reasoning, the idea and their influences.
Leading me to people such as

 Francis Firth

The term topographics was not really used during the 1850's, but Firth documented globally, such as the pyramids, Kairo (below left) and Moti Masjid as seen left.

Eugene Atget

Spent almost 30 years documenting old Paris and influenced people such as Walker Evans.

Walker Evans

Heavily influenced all the photographers within the New Topographics book.

Ed Ruscha

With his Sunset Strip (left) and his book
26 Gas Stations, which now can command a price of up to 25k.








I then had to briefly research

William Jenkins - curator
'George Eastman House, New York'
John Swarkowski - photographer, curator and historian

After reading a little on all the above people a connection with literature was becoming apparent. Some of the photographers started out as writers, such as Evans spending a year in Paris, with influences such as Baudelaire and Flaubert.

This lead me to John Brinkerhoff Jackson, who wrote about landscapes, describing the American landscape with words rather than images.
In his essays and books he discusses roads as places in and of themselves rather than routes to destinations.
In 'the Abstract World of the Hot-rodder' - The road was more than a means of getting from one place to another, it was a place itself, with its own population, architecture and landscape.

Few Quotes from John Brinkerhoff Jackson:

"The older I grow and the longer I look at landscapes and seek to understand them, the more convinced I am that their beauty is not simply an aspect but their very essence and that that beauty derives from the human presence."

"Let us hope that the merits and charm of the highway strip are not so obscure but they will be accepted by a wider public."

"The way a city grows, the direction in which it spreads, is a factor not so much of zoning or real estate activity or land values but of highways."

I then looked at people who may have been influenced by New Topographics

Donovan Wylie: Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010

For nearly 30 years, the Maze prison, ten miles outside Belfast, played a unique role in the Northern Ireland Troubles. Built in 1976 to house terrorist prisoners, political segregation was so fierce it led to scenes of violent protests, hunger strikes, mass escapes and deaths of both inmates and prison staff. At its peak capacity in the 1980s, the Maze housed more than 1,700 prisoners. In September 2000, under the terms of the Good Friday agreement, the prison was closed and the last four inmates were transferred to other prisons in Northern Ireland.




I can see an influence within his compositions.












http://vimeo.com/28611710

Link above - Donovan Wylie on Maze & his influences