re-visioning landscape in contemporary photography.

Ever since Niépce shot “View from the Window at Le Gras”, (the oldest surviving photograph to date.) landscape has retained its spot as a key genre in photography.

Much has changed since the first wave of pictorialist landscape photographers drew from romantic painting as a pivotal reference from where to start constructing what could be called “the language of classic landscape photography.”  Ansel Adams would later become the main reference with his naturalistic approach of portraying the American west as an untouched wilderness. His work was still hugely influenced by the classical idea of Nature as ideal place virgin to human presence. Nature remained exotic and distant from the notion of human habitat.

 The seminal work of Ansel adams would be challenged by every subsequent generation of photographers who approached space and landscape. Most notably the now legendary exposition of 1975 entitled New Topographics. Curated by William Jenkins and featuring artist such as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Stephen Shore among others. New Topographics was a drastic shift on the classic concept of landscape focusing con man altered landscapes and largely influenced by the work of the Bechers in Europe, who were also invited to participate in the project. Artist were no longer trying to portray the “sublime” beauty of untouched nature but instead adopted a neutral, very documentary approach of industrial spaces colliding with nature. Aesthetics were relegated in favor of concept and investigation of the relationship between man-made structures and natural space. Visual information became a key element; Emotion, opinion and beauty were not.

The influence of this generation of artist can still be seen in the work of many of today’s contemporary photographers, no matter how diverse their approach or “genre”. One can see a clear relation and influence –to the “new topographics school” not only in subject matter but also in conceptual approach. Early works of artist such as Gursky or Thomas Struth are strongly bound to the work of their teachers Hilla and Bernd Becher, but also artist such as Michael Wolf, Edward Burtynsky, gabriele basilico and even Martin Paar and Richard Moose also find themselves coming back to the idea of the social implications of space in contemporary life.
We live in a hybrid landscape and therefore the ways in which we relate landscape are also hybrid.

One could say that to some extent that the photographic landscape became quite stale for the better part of the last couple of decades, to the point were Deadpan Objective approach became sort of a comfort zone for new photographers. (More on that later.) But now I would like to feature a selection of contemporary practitioners who have been pushing the boundaries of landscape into new directions seeking to move beyond what we have already seen and is now known to us.

Myoung Ho Lee.

Lee photographs trees physically isolating them from their natural habitat creating a white backdrop as if they were in a studio.  Lee Challenges concepts such as visual hexarchy within the frame, context, and the idea of the subject in relation with its surroundings, the work makes special emphasis in the intrinsic notion of photography it’s self as judgment of subject matter and re contextualization of space.

 

Marisa Baumgartner

In Visible Cities, Baumgartner removes from her images of cities traces of nature, considered “negative spaces” and leaves only the artificial man-made features that could be considered the “positive” or components of the functional and inhabited built environment. The viewer is forced to fill in the empty space reflecting on how much of the “urban landscape is actually part of the natural environment.

 

Alexander Apostol.

Residente Pulido is Alexander’s most notable work in which he reflects on the recent social changes in Venezuela through the digital alteration of urban landscape in his hometown Caracas. Modern constructions from the 1950´s once symbols of Venezuela’s growing economy are now turned into inaccessible monoliths reminiscent of Venezuela’s Golden years in comparison to the uncertainty the country now lives in. 

Bleda & Rosa.

Spanish Photographers Bleda & Rosa approach the idea of collective memory through landscape. Campos de Batalla is a work were they photograph historically significant places throughout Europe were famous battles were once held. The work presented as diptychs of the same space over a period of time remind us of how time has stood still in these places that have become landscape- monuments of history.

Emlilio Pemjean.

Pemjean Investigates Landscape in relation to art and memory, in his series Palimpsesto the artist takes classic paintings such as Las Meninas by Velazques or The Music Lesson by Vermeer and reconstructs the building to photograph it in black and white. The work emphasizes in the cultural memory of spaces that in some cases no longer exist physically but have been immortalized by art.