Between Frontier and the back garden

- Contemporary responses to the land. 


In todays lecture, "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" which was an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography. The show was curated by William Jenkins at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (Rochester, NY) in January 1975. 


10 Photographers were part of this ;

1. Robert Adams
2. Lewis Baltz
3. Bernd and Hilla Becher
4. Joe Deal
5. Frank Gohike
6. Nicholas Nixon
7. John Schott
8. Stephen Shore
9. Henry Wessel 
10. William Jenkins 

Each photographer was represented by 10 prints and only 3 out of the 10  (Lewis Baltz, Frank Gohlke, and Stephen Shore) were commissioned by the French government for the Mission de la DATAR.  

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- SIMON NORFOLK 

• We also looked at a short inspiring clip of Photographer Simon Norfolk - His trip to Afghanistan 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXrmBhpRG2U

My views on this clip;

• Norfolk's work from Afghanistan and Iraq tells another story of war and, like all war photography is a combination of destruction, unbelievable moment and twisted beauty.
• He wanted to be in the same place as John Burke - who is the first person to have photographed Afghanistan

• Wants to make a mark, an empowering statement with these images - not due to the beauty 
• He is there to articulate his anger on the war and how disappointing it is that it achieved absolutely NOTHING. - yet tens of thousands of afghans were killed and for what exactly?

Norfolk has been photographing everything in pre-dawn and post-sunset light (blue and melancholy)

More of a disappointing light - 10 years of unnecessary warfare. 

-A Shia Cemetery on the flanks of Kohe Asmai.