Today's class with Richard was split between studying a selection of photographers who had chosen to adapt the topographical form of photography, before being set our mission, which, if we chose to accept it, would mean that 11 of us would be returning to the classroom with our very own interpretations of the wonderful world of topography.
So what exactly is topographical style and who are those that should be held responsible for our quest in the sunshine.....and whilst I'm at it.... are there others that worship at it's alter and what are their names ?
Topography is quite simply the study of surface and shape of geometric forms and typology is just the study of types of things so armed with that knowledge you can draw up some kind of conclusion that the topographical style of photography should give you an end result of a selection of images based around a repetitive theme which some may consider dull, clinical,simplistic or banal, maybe even lacking emotion, just as long as the final series appear to be some what interconnected if only by their apparent randomness.
Bernd and Hilla Becher were both born in Germany in the early 1930s, where as a child Bernd grew up witnessing a landscape punctured by the buildings of the German iron and coal industries but by their teens they were both living in a country devasted by the after effects of WWII. With this in mind, when it came to photography, they chose to document the industrial buildings of their childhoods that were still standing, as fine examples of what was good and strong about pre-Nazi Germany, and then proceeded to present them in a kind of catalogue fashion which they referred to as typologies. It wasn't just pit heads though as they went on to including cooling towers, blast furnaces and gas tanks amongst their chosen subject matter which they often displayed in the form of a large grid. Their particular style meant that they would shoot their subject matter head on and from a viewpoint that could be considered non political as they presented them in such a way that they were seen to be looking neither up or down at the structures. It should also be noted that their work wasn't restricted to the confines of their homeland as they have produced series of works from not only America but also Wales and England as can be seen below with a selection of their winding gear images.
The Bechers also taught at the Dusseldorf Art Academy in the 1970s, influencing many of their students including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer, in what has come to be commonly known as the Dusseldorf School Of Photography . They were also invited to attend an exhibition called New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975, featuring Stephen Shore along side a selected few others.
A final example I'd like to insert as an example of the topographical style, would be the work of Donovan Wylie and in particular his series The Maze which brings together a collection of images that some may consider repetitive and mundane but none the less they still act as a catalogue of images that best represent just what it would have been like to have been an occupant .
Now armed with the above information we were asked to go and explore the environment in and around the college grounds and produce a series of images that could sit together as a fair representation of the topographical style of photography and so with this in mind I came up with The Adopted Offspring of Mr & Mrs Birch
For further reading and examples of the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher, there are a couple of books mentioned over at Luminous Lint which are should be worth checking out.
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