>>3355198New Topographics is a tricky one. It's technically not even a photographic subgenre; it is only the name of an art gallery showing in 1975, which would mean you could argue that only the original participants in the showing are new topographics photographers. I don't necessarily agree with that, though.
I see this potential sub-genre as more challenging than it appears. It's very easy to photograph a "man altered landscape" if you live almost anywhere in the world now. The difficulty comes in actually conveying that the landscape is "man altered" through implications or impacts, vs. simply photographing a man-made object or environment. A beautiful cityscape image isn't necessarily "new topographics", if the original intent was to showcase the beauty of a city and its architecture/skyline, not that the city itself intrudes on or alters the landscape. Though, you could argue that the city exists as man's landscape, a landscape in the image of man, as it were.
My biggest question about new-topogrpahy was the motives behind individual photographers that shot the original show. A lot of readings I've done on it suggests that the work was supposed to be a cynical depiction of man intruding on nature, and how we're altering the world in a negative way. But was the work really about that? How do we know Lewis Baltz wasn't just transfixed by the geometry of contemporary warehouse buildings, or that Stephen Shore didn't just appreciate the kind of light he saw on a street corner at a certain time of year?
Then there's the thing about the work being called banal, or beautiful banality. I'd argue it's anything but banal, but I tend to see all the "pretty nature pictures" on Insta, FB etc. and think it's the most banal shit I've ever seen.
