>>3333272New Topographics sought to remove all of the beauty from landscape (and urban) photography while still trying to convey as much visual detail and information as possible. It often deals exclusively with the intrusion of man upon the natural environment, or often the sad facsimiles of nature that we put into artificial spaces. Pic related is one of my favorite examples, where you have a tiny mountain of dirt in a totally constructed space.
Landscape and, to a certain extent, cityscape try to make the scene as beautiful as possible. Some argue that this creates a lie by omission, others argue that the photographer is merely capturing the most ideal representation of a space that actually exists. Some people (Robert Adams, for example) argued that Ansel Adams damaged the environment by presenting this false ideal of national parks by fooling the public into believing that they still exist in this pristine state, while others argued that he convinced the American public that there were spaces worth saving. Both sides are right, and there's no clear-cut preference to who is the victor. It's mostly up to your preference.
Verisimilitude, by the way, is one of the determining factors in how Capital A Art your photo is. How faithfully you reproduce reality is super important and is a consideration you should make for all of your photos.
