A new vision of landscape photography emerged in 1975 and marked a turning point in the history of the medium. A group of photographers broke with the tradition of grand, monumental nature photography in the style of Ansel Adams. Instead, they turned their cameras toward landscapes shaped by human intervention: industrial zones, parking lots, and endless suburban developments.
With a groundbreaking exhibition, the New Topographics movement came into being, later proving influential for the Düsseldorf School.
But that is not my focus here.
One of the leading figures within the movement was Lewis Baltz (1945-2014). He introduced the idea of photography as “without author or art.” The most successful documentary photograph, he believed, should reveal no trace of its maker and no artistic ambition. Looking back on the exhibition, he stated: “Their aim was to appear to be without author or art. I wanted it to appear as though the camera was seeing by itself.”
Many years later, the German artist Joachim Schmid (1955) became deeply engaged with photographs without a visible author. His project Bilder von der Straße (1980–2012) consists of one thousand photographs found on the street, carefully collected and presented in exhibitions and books. Images without intention, removed from their original context, given a new order.
A third form within this lineage, in my view, is the accidentally created image. In 2010, I travelled to Switzerland with an old analogue camera and a cheap plastic point-and-shoot. In my enthusiasm, I thought: a perfect experiment. The camera, however, leaked light, and all the photographs were ruined, or so it seemed. Only last year did I look at the negatives again and realise that within these failed images, a certain beauty had emerged.
These photographs no longer carry my signature.
Here, the camera and coincidence are the authors.
Ansel Adams: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/52074?artist_id=60&page=1&sov_referrer=artist
New Topographics: https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/new-topographics
Joachim Schmid: https://www.lumpenfotografie.de/2006/01/01/bilder-von-der-strase-1982-2012/