Blog Post #13

Human-Made Space: In the past, photographers who were interested in how humans impacted the natural landscape grouped together to form the New Topographics. “"New Topographics" signaled the emergence of a new photographic approach to landscape: romanticization gave way to cooler appraisal, focused on the everyday built environment and more attuned to conceptual concerns of the broader art field.” http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibTopo.aspx

Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.



I know it’s not all one way or another, but when I think about human interaction with nature and the physical land/landscapes, I have a hard time drawing a positive image in my mind. I think of deforestation, garbage floating in the ocean, oil spills, vast parking lots filling what used to be nature, logging, pollution and factories- basically negative images of things humans have done to the land flood my mind. Even clearing plots of land to build housing comes off as negative to me. Those large unnatural houses in the pictures from the New Topographics site make me feel uneasy and somewhat bitter, although I do sort of enjoy how rough and unfinished they are.

Although I do enjoy capturing the beauty in the world through photographs, I think it is equally important to capture the horror. If I were to do one of these “land art’ photos, I would try to seek out a scene of man and nature clashing in an unnatural way or show something obnoxious created by humans in an environment that doesn’t suit it (like those grandiose houses in the barren landscape) to highlight the absurdity of the situation.

Alternatively, I also like scenes of nature overcoming man-made obstacles, such as abandoned buildings with trees or weeds growing through them, ivy and roots destroying foundations of buildings, so on and so forth.

I would try to capture the conflict of man vs nature.