Bruno Chalifour (Ph D., photo-historian and photographer) is answering Luminous eye’s questions regarding the presentation of his thesis “Le Paysage de la Photographie Américaine de Paysage 1960-1990”
A “new genre” in American landscape photography, New Topographics” was inspired by a word of Greek origin “topography.” Why? And who funded the exhibition?
The title was the common choice of William Jenkins and Joe Deal. In 1975, Jenkins was the director of contemporary photography at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester (NY); Deal wanted to avoid the Vietnam war and worked there as a night guard as a conscientious objector. The idea of the term “topography” came as a reference to the 19th-century geological and geographical surveys of the American west, and the documentary approach of the New Topographers as well as the decision of some, Lewis Baltz for instance, to leave subjectivity and authorship behind. “New” indicated that the perspective / point of view was different, “new.” Strictly speaking theuse of the term was fuzzy at best: Mark Klett who was a geologist and had worked as a topographer before studying for an MFA in photography at Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester NY) saw New Topographics at the IMPGEH in 1975 and argued that it had very little to do with “topography.” The exhibition was seen by very few people. Only two or three magazines reviewed it among which Afterimage (published by Visual Studies Workshop) whose editor also argued that “Topographic” was not used properly. William Jenkins, the curator of the show, later wrote that “topographic” was used as an advertising device for the show (it sounded serious, scientific) and to echo the participants’ alleged “objective”, unemotional approach of the landscape. Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, and 1-0Edward Ruscha were also mentioned as references and influences for this new trend in American landscape photography because of their “detached” visions. The funding came from the museum. The photographers sent their prints for the exhibition. All except the Bechers’ were acquired mostly through donation or for a rather low price. The whole show, again except for the photographs by the Bechers, are now part of the George Eastman Museum archive. It was a rather ignored exhibition in 1975. Its popularity grew with the following exhibitions and funding (Guggenheim foundation, National Endowment for the Arts) given to the participants.
From one Adams the other (from Ansel Adams to Robert Adams), specifically until New Topographics, what key changes happened to the way that photographers handled the medium?
There were many ways in which fine art photography evolved from the 1950s to the 1980s. They may be summarized this way:
SIZE: Most fine-art prints until the 1980s were either printed by contact from 8×10” or 4×5” black and white negatives, or enlarged (35 mm), 6×6 cm) on 8×10 or slightly bigger paper. The reference format was 8×10. New Topographics (1975) is a good example of that. Once photography had entered the art market and photographs started to compete with paintings for space on the walls of galleries and museums, sizes started to increase. The market probably participates in this too: bigger prints could command higher prices. In 1950 there were almost no gallery showing photographs in the USA, definitely no museum except the Museum of Modern Art in New York (since the 1937 historical exhibition there by Beaumont Newhall and the 1938 “American Photographs” show by Walker Evans). The International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House only opened its doors in 1949. Photographer printed mostly for themselves, their friends and a few local, national and international salons. Contact prints were a synonym of the utmost quality a photographer could expect from the medium, away from advertising.
ART MARKET: There was no art market for photographs that sold at very low prices, even in the 1950s-1960s (1). By the end of the 1970s, prices rapidly increased and galleries opened (2) when photography really entered the art market. This totally changed the dynamics in American photography and separated fine-art photographers from “artists using photography,” and from more common and traditional practices in line with Ansel Adams’s legacy.
EDUCATION: By the 1970s most fine-art photographers had studied photography (and art) in the newly created fine art departments of universities. Most of them had Master’s degrees in Fine Art (MFAs) which gave them better chances to get financing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim foundation and opened the door to teaching jobs in expanding universities. (3) In the wake of the creation of photo programs and departments in universities, the Society for Photographic Education was created in 1963 in Chicago by people such as Harry Callahan, Carl Chiarenza, Kenneth Josephson, Henry Holmes-Smith, Nathan Lyons, Beaumont Newhall, Aaron Siskind, John Szarkowski, Jerry Uelsmann, Clarence White, Minor White… Since then it has allowed the exchange of information, teaching methods, newideas throughout the teaching community across the country.
FINANCING: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created in 1965(4) under L.B. Johnson’s presidency. It became a major source of public financing for the arts and photography in particular (artists but also galleries, museums, exhibitions, publications) until the 1990s(5). In the 1960s the Guggenheim foundation started to fund more and more photographers(6). When the market developed big companies started to invest in collection of photographs and finance exhibition. In 1976, for the bicentennial of the American “revolution”, the big Court House project was financed by the Seagram company (distillery).
POLITICS: Once the post-World War 2 repressive years had passed(7), photography became more and more political(8) and dealt with the issues of “landscape” as real estate, pollution, environment and the lawless exploitation of natural resources (mining, oil and logging companies). Landscape became the first locus of political dissent in fine-art photography in the 1970s. The debate over the protection of the environment had been tolerated through the repressive years of the 1940s and 1950s thanks to the repeated campaigns of the Sierra Club (Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter,…) and such issues were acknowledged as politically correct. During the following decades 1970s, “80s and ‘90s, voices became more and more political and overtly critical (Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, David Hanson, Richard Misrach,…).
ART WORLD: Most fine-art photographers trained in universities (Master’s degree of Fine Art). There they were exposed to ideas in the other departments (other arts, sociology, anthropology, geography, philosophy, sciences,…)as well as to the history of their own medium (at home and abroad). Meanwhile other students in the other arts became exposed to photography thence the birth of “artists using photography”(9).
COLOR: The problem with color in the 1950s was that color reproduction and conservation were simply bad. Getting quality and longevity for photographic prints was very technical and expensive (dye transfer).(10) (11). Color film was also very slow. The technology slowly improved: better color reproduction, faster film (still slower than black and white). Color stability was still extremely poor to the point that several law-suits by photographers (especially portrait and wedding photographers) in the early 1980s forced Kodak (Fuji and Agfa too) to (slightly) correct the conservation problem (12). More and more photographers started to use color, and because of the market and the competition with the other visual arts (notably, painting), color prints got bigger and bigger(13).
How did the photographers’ views reflect the changes and sensitivities in US politics?
Definitely reflections on ecology, economy and politics (the landscape as real estate), environmental movement, violence(14), the destruction operated by American capitalism on its own territory (Park City, Denver, Cancer Alley in Louisiana). The works of Ed Ruscha (seriality, the death of the author) and Robert Smithson (land art), and several other artists outside of photography influenced photographers. The writings of John Brinckerhoff JACKSON on the vernacular landscape, Nathan Lyons’s texts on the social landscape and the snapshot (vernacular photography) also had a deep influence. Outside the field of landscape photography, feminism (Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Barbara Kruger, Tina Barney,… ) and gay issues (Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Catherine Opie,…) began to express themselves through photography (all of these photographers had been through university art programs).
What important changes has photographic form undergone with and after NewTopographics?
Several major changes: beyond subject matter(15), the notion of what a landscape photograph should depict and look like evolved. More environment-conscious and political preoccupations and expression. Instead of the emphatic, romantic overtone of Ansel Adams’ photographs (the reference then) photographers sought quieter, more mundane and vernacular scenes expressed through less strong and subtler composition, sometimes even very basic (subject and horizon right in the center of the frame as part of a search for neutrality). Vernacular photography inspired the so-called “snapshot” esthetic where the skill of the photographer recedes to give more room to (alleged and planned) “spontaneity.” Color and size, the way to use the frame (Lee Friedlander) and composition are also deeply revised taking into account the history of photography. Several photographers (not always strictly landscape photographers) are mentioned as influences: Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, R. Adams, L. Baltz, and Richard Misrach(16).
What has the impact of this new trend in American landscape photography been outside of the USA and why do we need to know about it?
The 1960-1990 period was the golden age of American photography in general, American landscape photography in particular. These three decades see a tradition dating back to the 19th century morphing into several different practices, some of which inspired by this tradition set out to challenge it. These trends developed and still coexist now:
the traditional landscape inherited from the XIXth century tradition: Ansel Adams of course and many of his assistant (John Sexton for instance), Clive Butcher, Eliot Porter (color), Glenn Ketchum, 3 generations of Muench (David Muench)… This esthetic is still at work in the publications of the Sierra Club, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic, in magazine such as Outdoor Photographer. This has been given a new life with the advent digital photography: boosted saturation (unreal colors), and the use of High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques (weird colors).
the landscape as metaphor, a tradition dating back to Alfred Stieglitz’s notion of “TheEquivalent” prolonged by Minor White and then the “landscapes of the mind” (with Carl Chiarenza, Kenneth Josephson and Jerry Uelsmann).
a very formalistic, experimental and personal approach to the landscape (the Chicago then Rhode Island school of landscape photography) with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind (Ray Metzker, Art Sinsabaugh were their students in Chicago).
the New Topographic “school” of landscape photography. It has influenced and still influences a major segment of landscape photography in Canada (Robert Bourdeau, Robert Polidori, Edward Burynsky), Europe (John Davies, Thomas Struth, DATAR mission, Cross-Channel Mission), Japan and now China.
prolonging the above, the lifework of Richard Misrach.
the historical approach with Mark Klett and the Rephotographic Surveys.
Why and how have you been involved with landscape photography?
First, this was a personal evolution of my own photography from social documentary, street photography based on reflexes, quick action, my experience of photojournalism (the French tradition epitomized by Cartier-Bresson, Ronis, Doisneau, Izis, Depardon…) toward a slower, more contemplative and self-reflective practice (landscape), from productive stress to productive contemplation and meditation, from witness (photojournalism) to a feeling of participation and belonging (landscape photography). Moving from capturing the “decisive moment,” to letting my awareness and knowledge unconsciously guide me to luminous epiphanies (aletheia), unique revelations resulting from my feeling part of a scene where and when the world in its complexity, beauty and serenity reveals itself to me for a few seconds, minutes. Then the awareness of the diversity of the potential points of view as illustrated by the works of others, by the history of the medium; all these can coalesce in one single image, or be developed in a series of them. The landscape as photograph really fully becomes a complex universe, what it is in fact, a production of the mind, not just mine, ours. Light became the ultimate subject.
26/09/2019 Lyon
For Luminous eye
1 Between $15 and $50 according to exhibition lists in MoMA’s archives even for people like Edward Weston, Paul Strand or Ansel Adams.
2 Starting early 1970s (Light gallery in New York City in 1970)
3 All the photographers included in New Topographics either taught or would teach (Shore starting in 1982 at Bard College although he never completed high school and left at 16)
4 “a great nation deserves great art”
5 Reagan and the Culture Wars led by the Christian fundamentalist right. Even now, every budget that Donald Trump has submitted to Congress wanted to eliminate the NEA
6 Robert Frank completed “The Americans” thanks to two Guggenheim grants in 1955 and 1956
7 McCarthy’s black listing of communists or communist sympathizers (= impossibility to find a job) including the Photo League. That is when Charlie Chaplin, Jules Dassin and Paul Strand decided to emigrate to Europe
8 including feminist and gay movements
9 Cindy Sherman for instance who studied photography at Buffalo State University and got her BFA there, but whose printing skills are awful, as exemplified by the 100 prints of her famous series “Film Still” (inconsistent film processing (reticulation, contrast) and printing, unspotted prints, inconsistent grain, density and contrast), characteristic that were unthinkable in the real “photo” world
10 conservation quality is extremely important for museums and galleries/collectors
11 bad color reproduction, slow (low ASA/ISO light sensitivity, around 10 for Kodachrome.
12 see problem with Shore’s prints for New Topographics above
13 see the evolution of Richard Misrach’s work
14 US Army’s nuclear tests in various American deserts, (see Shambroom’s photographs on nuclear storage and the nuclear “landscape” in the USA)
15 vernacular subjects and man-altered landscapes replaced the High Sierras photographed by Ansel Adams
16 among others Simon Norfolk and Shai Kramer mention Misrach as an influence
