topographics

The American topographics movement (the “man-altered landscape”) of the 1970s was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental ie., the tradition of nature photography of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston had created. It expressed the growing unease in the US about how the natural landscape was being eroded by industrial development and the spread of cities.

What kind of Australian photography was I reacting against?