With jargon words in the title, it is always worth checking on definitions. It is also worth getting ‘-ology’ and ‘-ography’ the right way round, to avoid discussing typesetting while trying to turn a doughnut into a coffee cup.
I discussed the meaning of ‘typology’ in a posting for I&P. Since that posting in 2018, I have spent time working with archaeologists in my volunteering rôle with English Heritage and I am aware that what photography writers call ‘typology’ or ‘typological approach’ is usually no such thing. The Bechers’ overall oeuvre is a typology (having classified industrial structures into types, they studied individual types) as is Susan Hillers ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artists’ (postcards of seascapes in heavy weather with an accompanying table detailing location, type of weather and other characteristics). However, too often, the term seems to be applied to a group of photographs made with a deadpan aesthetic and looking a bit similar to each other. I confess that I am guilty of that myself, and produced this as an exercise in EYV
If topology is the mathematical study of surfaces, then topography is writing about them. The term appears to be used almost exclusively in a geographical context and is defined by the online Cambridge Dictionary as “the physical appearance of the natural features of an area of land, especially the shape of its surface”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (mine is the 1964 fifth edition) defines it as “Detailed description, representation on map etc., of natural and artificial features of a town , district etc” which is, perhaps a better fit for the images considered in this part of the course. ‘Topographic’ may be considered the adjectival form.
The ‘New Topographics’ art movement in landscape photography takes its name from a 1975 exhibition curated by William Jenkins and subtitled ‘Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’. The exhibition was fairly universally hated at the time (O’Hagan 2010) but opinions change and it is now considered a turning point in the history of photography and has been restaged several times, including in 2010 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA 2010). Featuring the work of nine photographers (counting Team Becher as two), Deborah Bright (1985) acknowledges that “Perhaps no exhibition and catalogue were more influential on the course of landscape photography during the 1970s and beyond”, although she goes on to damn it with faint praise and is rude about Robert Adams’ commercial motivations. Kelly Dennis (2012) is more enthusiastic, and critical of Bright’s social agenda.
The New Topographics photographers deal with the American West of the late 20th century through, as the title suggests, an examination of human influence on the landscape in the form of industry, housing estates (referred to as ‘tract housing’) car parks, drive-ins etc. This is done in a very bland, deadpan style, sharply focussed and usually with blank skies. All of this is in direct contrast with their predecessors, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston etc. whose landscapes promoted the tourist myth of the pristine wilderness. The New Topographics photographers probably had more in common with the earlier generation of topographical photographers such as O’Sullivan and Watkins, noted in a previous posting who were showing ‘progress’ and development at what was then considered ‘the frontier’.
‘New Topographics’ was about America but did include work by Bernd and Hilla Becher (part of a coal mine in Pennsylvania, above) who taught at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf and promoted ‘Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity)’ (Tate s.d.) Their pupils included Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff, whose working style has developed from the New Topographic.
The UK landscape is not so extensive as a the US and does not lend itself easily to the same kind of treatment. Two photographers who have worked in a colour deadpan style are Sarah Pickering and Donovan Wylie; it may be no coincidence that both of them work with (for lack of a better phrase) institutionalised landscapes.
I have encountered Pickering’s series ‘Public Order’ in both C&N and I&P, and posted about it. Her subject matter is emergency services’ training areas where simulated disaster and riot control exercises are played out.
Wylie is a Belfast photographer whose work deals with “the transient nature of contemporary military architecture” (Wylie s.d.). His first acclaimed work was a 2004 series on HMP Maze, assisted by discovery of the architectural drawings, and followed up by a 2007 series on its demolition. He also has three series on military watchtowers in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and the Canadian Arctic. There are two YouTube videos, in which he discusses his influences and the Maze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naoxP-iLvqU) and Afghanistan series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQekhfX73zE)
Unfortunately, the link quoted in the course notes for the Maze book is out-of-date.
List of illustrations
Becher, B&H (1974) Preparation Plant, Harry E. Colliery Coal Breaker, Wiles Barre, Pennsylvania, USA [digital image of photograph] At: https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/new-topographics/ (Accessed 14 July 2020)
Bedford, C (2016) Drivetrains: Elveden 2016 [digital photograph] In possession of: author
References
Bedford, C. (2018) Typologies. At: https://chasbedfordocablogip.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/typologies (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
Bright, D. (1985) Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men. At: http://www.deborahbright.net/PDF/Bright-Marlboro.pdf (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
Dennis, K. (2012) New Topographics: “Landscape and the West – Irony and Critique in New Topographic Photography” (2005). At: https://americansuburbx.com/2012/05/new-topographics-landscape-and-the-west-irony-and-critique-in-new-topographic-photography-2005.html (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
O’Hagan, S. (2010) New Topographics: photographs that find beauty in the banal. At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-photographs-american-landscapes (Accessed on 13 July 2010)
SFMoMA (2010) New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. At: https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/new-topographics/ (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
Tate (s.d.) Dusseldorf School of Photography. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/dusseldorf-school-photography (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
Wylie, D. (s.d.) Donovan Wylie (about). At: http://donovanwylie.studio/index.php?page=about (Accessed on 14 July 2020)
Landscape Lines 