An elegiac inventory of a vanishing industrial world, and the one supplanting it

摘要

In 1975 a show with the unappealing title New Topographics appeared at just three modest venues in the US. Thirty-five years later, a new version of the same exhibition is travelling to eight notable institutions, from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, and this weighty book accompanies it. Clearly that first show struck a chord.rnSubtitled Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, it featured the work of 10 photographers. All are American, apart from German duo Bernd and Hilla Beche. Except for the studied neutrality of their approach, the Bechers weren't truly representative of the work in New Topographics. While they compiled an elegiac inventory of a vanishing industrial world, the other participants looked more at the one supplanting it.