Topic: New Topographics

[Late Developer]

I'm sure most of us will be familiar with this style of shooting / photographic movement but I'd never come across a term used to describe it.  Until today.  It apparently describes "finding beauty in the banal".

Apologies to those already familiar with the term but I thought it was worth posting this for those of us, like myself, who really like this type of photography but had no idea it'd been given a name....

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-photographs-american-landscapes

[02Pilot]

I'd heard the term before, though not often.

I reject the author's contention that this was the genesis of photography seeking to find beauty in the ordinary; some of the photographers working in Paris in the 1920s were doing the same thing. He's on more solid ground when he talks about it as coinciding with the early environmental politics of the 1970s as a criticism of the impact of the man-made on the landscape. Surprisingly he doesn't mention Bernd and Hiller Becher, whose Dusseldorf school basically invented this frontal aspect rectilinear sort of stuff.

Aside from the occasional exception, I find myself agreeing with the author's friend, who he quotes as saying: "If I were to commission a bunch of authors to write essays on boredom, I would not expect the result to be a bunch of boring essays. Nor would I give it a pretentious postmodern title."

[Late Developer]

Can't help but agree. 

I must admit that I'm not at all familiar with Bernd and Hiller Becher (well not by name, anyway - though I might have seen some of their work.) 

I'm always looking for something new and interesting and, although the genre isn't new "to the eye", I'm interested enough to want to find out more about where and how it originated.  Postmodern titles seem almost inevitable in all forms of art, though.....

[jharr]

New Topographers Flickr group became public 7 years ago. I have added a few pics here and there, but believe it or not, browsing through pages of photos of the 'mundane' can get a little tedious.

From the group's description:
New Topography 'deals with the kind of sub-events which crop up on a daily basis but which are usually taken in at speed and not dwelt on' (The Photo Book).
This group is for photos of items of interest that are normally missed in the daily rush.

[Indofunk]

Banal photographs? That describes my entire body of work! 

 

[02Pilot]

It's far easier to produce something worth looking at with a mundane photo of an interesting subject than it is with an interesting photo of a mundane subject. Consider something like Kertesz's Chez Mondrian (https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/83800.html) or Fork (https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/objects/83802.html). There is nothing inherently interesting about the subject of either picture, but the photos are brilliant.

My objection to the "New Topographics" or the Dusseldorf school or whatever term you prefer is that they seem to be trying to convince people that mundane photos of mundane subjects are worth looking at. Usually, they aren't.

[kentish cob]

My objection to the "New Topographics" or the Dusseldorf school or whatever term you prefer is that they seem to be trying to convince people that mundane photos of mundane subjects are worth looking at. Usually, they aren't.

so it seems the new topographic movement is alive and well on social media... 

I think I first came across the term in the BBCs excellent "the genius of photography". If memory serves, Steven Shore featured quite heavily. I believe the Bechers work (also featured, but possibly not in the same part) was considered more  a "typology" than "new topographic" being as they photographed some quite complex (and therefor interesting on at least one level) industrial architecture, albeit in a fairly flat and banal style. I think your genuine "new topographer" would have been more drawn to the bus stop across the street...

For the record, I'm not offended by the Bechers industrial output... pictures of bus stops and half-eaten dinners leave me cold...

[Late Developer]

"It's far easier to produce something worth looking at with a mundane photo of an interesting subject than it is with an interesting photo of a mundane subject".

Now then, that encapsulates everything that was going through my head at the time I saw the article in the Guardian.

Producing an interesting photograph of a mundane subject is probably the most difficult thing to achieve as the photographer is already starting at a disadvantage - i.e. how do you make a photograph of a fork, interesting.  As a result, any "new topographer" who manages the feat (aside from as a result of a sheer fluke) can probably be regarded as talented or, in the case of the Kertesz photos, brilliant. 

I recently visited Foyle's bookshop and, as ever, had a rummage around the photography and art section and couldn't believe my eyes when I found a book dedicated to photographs of Soviet bus stops. Before I opened it, I had one of those "whiskey, tango, foxtrot" moments and dismissed the thought of ever buying it almost immediately as I wasn't remotely interested in the subject matter.  It did strike me, though, that the photography was, technically, quite good.  However, I'm thinking that book might just epitomise "new topography".  Have a look, see what you think;

http://herwigphoto.com/project/soviet-bus-stops/

Anyway, I'm off to have a look at the offerings on Flickr, as mentioned by James....

[02Pilot]

I've seen those Soviet bus stop photos before - I think the BBC website had something on them when the book was published. Indeed, I those photos are reasonably well done, and I do think the subject - mundane remnants of a fallen empire - is interesting, much in the way the ruins of any past civilization would be. They may well be a rare example of this genre that is worth viewing, but to me only when taken as a cohesive group, not individually.

[Francois]

Banal photographs? That describes my entire body of work! 

I guess it pretty much describes mine too...

Strangely, taking banal pictures is probably the hardest thing for me. This is probably because I live in the most boring suburb in the world!
Nothing is really beautiful, nothing is really ugly, nothing is really funny looking, nothing is decrepit enough to look good.
I did take a few pictures of cityscapes a few years ago... it was an entire development where every house is strictly identical. I took probably 10 pictures on half frame, frontal view of the houses... never got any interesting comment about it either so I guess it falls in the beyond boring category 

And this makes me wonder what exactly makes those boring pictures become interesting enough to put on the wall?
Is it the exotic side of visiting a place you've never been to? Is it just the size of the image (these are never shown on 4x6)?

[Jeff Warden]

I'm sure most of us will be familiar with this style of shooting / photographic movement but I'd never come across a term used to describe it.  Until today.  It apparently describes "finding beauty in the banal".

Apologies to those already familiar with the term but I thought it was worth posting this for those of us, like myself, who really like this type of photography but had no idea it'd been given a name....

I like this type of work too.

I think the author does a disservice to the photographers with the "find beauty in the banal" business.  The work isn't banal and I'm wondering if he knows the definition of the word.     Just taking Robert Adams as an example, he's said before that he was taking pictures of what he hated about the development of the American west (the dehumanizing cheapness of it all, the trash, the lack of stewardship of the land) and while he was surprised that his prints were sometimes quite lovely, that didn't change the message, scope or depth of his work, which has remained consistent for forty years now. 

"The work of the photographers in the New Topographics exhibition, now collected in an austerely beautiful book of the same name by Steidl, still looks, for the most part, contemporary – and still seems troubling in its matter-of-factness, its almost dull reflection of the uniform and banal."

I think he needs to learn more about the work.   

[Sandeha Lynch]

I kind of stand with Jim Richardson's perspective on this: "If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of better stuff."

The great body of work done by the Bechers was as impressive as it was probably inevitable, but that doesn't mean it requires more than a cursory glance now.  I mean, like Dante's Divine Comedy, only the Hell part is interesting but even some of that is dull as dust. 

I happen to enjoy planning, so I plan, but once the first shot is taken then it's all about the spontaneity of the moment, the light, the subject, the light again, and then the subject some more.  I'm not going to give a flying fk if anyone thinks my choices are scintillating or banal as my photography is primarily an autobiographical vehicle for expression and secondarily about finding an interesting angle that satisfies my formalist requirements.

There are far too many photographers doing the bus stop and abandoned warehouse sort of thing, almost as though they are perpetually reviewing their own end-of-degree shows, the dullest of whom don't even seem to know how to set the sensitivities of their sensor.  But there are still a few I know who can do it and do it well through their understanding of forms and colour palettes.  They are rare.