Catholicity and the New Topographics III

(Grain Elevators, 1977 - Frank Gohlke)

I want to set up a little art historical context for the New Topographics since it is vital to their understanding and how I will ultimately address them.


It is widely commented that the New Topographics were reacting against Ansel Adams’ F/64 group which drew its name from the aperture of the large format cameras used by Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and others of the group to capture sharpness in both the fore and background. Beaumont Newhall, the photography historian, notes that the F/64 group emerged as a later movement within straight photography as a reaction against the sentimentality of pictorialism.[1] The early straight photographers picked up as their slogan “form follows function” so that their photographs would actually look like photography. This was done in response, as noted above, to pictorialism which “forced photography to emulate the surface textures of pictures made by other media.”[2] What emerges is a new sort of objectivity and realism through a “hands-off” approach. Edward Weston wrote, “the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself…the approach to photography is through realism.”[3]

Kelly Dennis suggests that the work of Weston and Adams’ images of unspoiled wilderness have often served utopian ends for Western myths and ideology.[4] This idea of the American Eden is prevalent in responses the F/64’s work. Chris Burnett’s recent paper at the College Art Association draws upon the work of Louis Marin and the contradictions of utopia in human imagination in Utopics: Spatial Play[5] (first published in 1973, just two years before the New Topographics exhibit). Burnett’s term, “degraded utopia” emphasizes the contradictions of “everyday scenes coexist[ing] with simulated landscapes…[to] reveal their mutual utopian destiny as both a ‘good’ and ‘no’ place.”[6]



[1] Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York, Bullfinch Press, 1982), 192.
[2] Newhall, 167.
[3] Quoted by Newhall, p187-88.
[4] Kelly Dennis, Landscape and the West: Irony and Critique in New Topographic Photography. Paper presented at Forum UNESCO University and Heritage 10th International Seminar, “Cultural Lanscapes in 21st Century” 2005.
[5] Louis Marin, Utopics: Spatial Play (Palgrave Macmillan, 1984).
[6] Chris Burnett, New Topographics Now: Simulated Landscapes and Degraded Utopia, Presented at 2008 College Art Association National Conference.

Long Shadows Of A North Dakota Winter Day

Yesterday was a beautiful day around campus with temperatures in the mid-teens, bright blue skies with the sun casting long shadows over the ground from anything that rises vertically.

Catholicity and the New Topographics II

(Water Towers, 1980 - Bernd and Hilla Becher)
















Sheldrake’s first chapter wrestles with complexity and diversity of place which makes it very difficult to pin down in theory and perhaps in practice as well.

Essentially, place “refers not simply to geographical location but to a dialectical relationship between environment and human narrative. Place is space that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke what is most precious.”[1] Sheldrake is already weeding through common misconceptions of place as simple location as is used in common language today. Secondly, Sheldrake accurately points out the dialectic between the environment and humanity and its reciprocity. Humanity shapes and cultivates its environment which simultaneously impacts its local residents. Sheldrake also leans heavily upon narrative structured remembering and history accounts through Paul Ricouer. A third component of Sheldrake’s theology of place is rooted, to use a metaphor of place, in the evoking of what is precious. What is precious and how does this work? Memory and imagination, formed in the liturgy by the Eucharist will likely play a prominent role in answering these questions.

As I considered the “dialectical” component of Sheldrake’s work, I began to think about Genesis and the creation stories. God offers Adam dominion over creation and not domination. But in our technological age, have we lost the understanding of the “give and take” relationship we have with the environment? Has the earth become another means toward personal and global fulfillment? Another entity that those in power enact said power upon? Do we only recognize the reciprocity in the midst of tragedies such as the tsunami, hurricanes, tornados, and draughts?

So as I am reading Sheldrake’s work again I am continuing to direct my thoughts toward the New Topographics. In the introduction to my paper I’ve written,

“In 1975, William Jenkins, the Assistant Curator of 20th Century Photography at the George Eastman House gallery convened a landmark exhibit titled, “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.” The ten invited photographers,[2] each with a distinctive approach, shared a common aesthetic through which they worked. By shifting their lenses from the pristine and Edenic West found in the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, they focused a documentary-like objective gaze upon the emerging banality of place under the shifting weight of industry and consumptive patterns. In turn, they ushered in a profound alteration in landscape photography. Despite the absence of humanity from the images, their work speaks prominently of anthropology and the human imprint upon the landscape.”

The subtitle caught my attention today after reading Sheldrake…”Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.” If you have not seen any of their work, a common feature is the lack of actual humanity. I cannot recall any images of humanity even being in the show. But the human foot/fingerprint is readily present. Here, most prominently is one half of the dialectic; human imprints upon the world. Only, in a few of Robert Adams photographs, are we subtly aware of nature’s push back into human endeavors.

[1] Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred, p.1.
[2] Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel, Jr.

Catholicity and the New Topographics

(Holden St. North Adams, Massachusetts, 1974 by Stephen Shore)

Well now that Christmas day has passed and all the preparations that went into it, I feel as if I can finally turn my attention to research and writing the paper for CTS at the end of May. The paper is titled, Re-Viewing Place: Catholicity and the New Topographics which is an attempt to reconcile my studies in art, theology and place into a cohesive proposal. I am thankful that I have made good headway into researching the New Topographics this last semester in my 20th & 21st C. Art History Class. One of the struggles in this project is the relatively little engagement this group has received until a more recent resurgence in interest in the group.

My paper will examine Philip Sheldrake's Spaces for the Sacred as a potential hermeneutical lens, not only for place, but the landscapes of the New Topographics. Sheldrake's lens is one of catholicity formed by the Eucharist. My hope is to explore the implications of his proposal for mission, and to some extent ethics and ecology.

My hope is to fill postings here with my progress and musings over the next few months as I interact with these ideas. I am beginning with a re-reading of Sheldrake's text which I read in 2006 as part of a larger inquiry into sacred space/place.

Merry Christmas!

Cavalcade of Bad Nativities

Well its that time of year again. Time for me to send around my annual link to Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. If you've not seen this before, make some room to laugh at the comments and kitsch.


"Is the baby Jesus made from mini marshmallows and those little Andes tingaling mints? And his name shall mean, Snacks Are With Us."

End of the Semester Musings and Re-considering the Source of the Artistic Idea

Ahhh…the first day of Christmas vacation. What a good feeling of completion and anticipation for rest. I cannot believe how quickly the semester has gone by. Yesterday I finished with a final in 20th and 21st Century Art History. The test preparations proved to be formidable with a larger list of artists and disparate movements which are simple more complex than early 20th Century developments. But I am quite sure I passed the test and may have done quite well if my one essay hits the mark.

This break will be a busy one with continuing work at the graduate school offices, research for the paper that was accepted to the College Theology Society annual meetings, and a few artistic projects as well.

I’ve already begun work on one such piece. I’ve been pondering the effects of our digital age upon memory for some time. I have finally broken through to an idea to wrestle that question in a visual manner. I am excited to get one version of it for entering in a few shows coming up this spring. The past week or two has been really productive in terms of conceptual ideas. I am not sure what it is, but I have had 3-4 totally new project ideas, and clearer direction with others.

This is the question that drove me to my master’s thesis wrestling with the source of the creative idea. Where does it come from? Why do certain periods prove to be so prolific in for artists? The second is a variant question but still has relevance to the first. My original thought when entering seminary was to look at the role of the Spirit in the artistic process. Despite writing a thesis and reading for the better part of a year on related subjects, I am just as confused, perhaps more, about the issue than I was then. I have considered returning to that subject again for some blog posts to hopefully generate some discussion among artists. I really want to give a balanced approach to the experience of being an artist, human giftedness and embodiment, and orthodox theology. Most approaches that I have encountered minimize the human too much that there is little difference between the Christian artist and that described by Plato in Timeus. This simply does not work for me or give significant enough emphasis on the human faculties.