The idea of the romantic landscape was pretty much squashed by the New Topographics crew in the 1970s. Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, and their contemporaries weren’t interested in the magnificent vistas that had inspired so much early photography, especially of the American West. Instead, they turned their attention to the industrial parks, tract homes, shopping malls, and other features of the built environment that, while a lot less picturesque, were a lot more ubiquitous. Their landscapes were matter-of-fact but hardly unsophisticated, combining dirty realism with a heady dose of the quotidian sublime. Their approach was not merely influential; it became a new way of seeing – one that informs several of the books under consideration here. Prime example: American Winter (MACK) by Gerry Johansson, a Swedish photographer in his 70s who, despite nine previous books, is new to me. But if his latest collection, a hefty block of a book with more than 300 small, black-and-white images and no text, had the impact of a new discovery, it’s far too solid to depend on the element of surprise. Made over the winters of 2017 and 2018 in rural and small-town Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, and other states west of the Mississippi, the work is precise, restrained, and rigorously descriptive. There are no people on these roads, lawns, and empty lots, and Johansson isn’t particularly concerned with signs of their presence. Instead, he focuses on weathered wood siding, isolated buildings, bare trees, and the shadows caused by cold, raking light. Beauty is all the more poignant for being incidental and understated. There’s almost too much work here, but nothing feels superfluous; throughout, Johansson strikes a perfect balance of raw and refined.
Two other books share much of Johansson’s aesthetic – its concision, its scope – but are more obviously in debt to Alec Soth’s brilliant Broken Manual, his 2011 investigation of Americans living off the grid. Like that book, Kristine Potter’s Manifest (TBW) and Matthew Genitempo’s Jasper (Twin Palms) juxtapose landscapes and portraits to suggest a willful, rugged rootlessness – an escape (from civilization? from responsibility? from the law?) into a wilderness that’s at once welcoming and forbidding. Although both books have a large cast of characters (all white men, young and old), neither coalesces around a narrative. With a town in the Colorado mountains as her home base, Potter roamed the territory nearby; according to Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s closing essay, she worked “at the intersection of myth, masculinity, and militarism,” although that last is far from explicit. Genitempo took his pictures in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri, where he found a similar cast of weathered loners; his photograph of one man’s cabin interior recalls Walker Evans’s sharecropper’s shack. There are echoes of Katy Grannan and Justine Kurland in both books – a sensitivity to masculinity in extremis and on guard paired with the recognition that many of these guys are not just solitary but lost to the world. Manifest and Jasper are handsome productions – beautifully shot, shrewdly sequenced, layered and mysterious. Potter and Genitempo aren’t spinning tales, they’re casting spells.
It’s not fair to Saul Fletcher’s self-titled new book (from Inventory Press) to squeeze it in at the end here, but it cannot be ignored. A collection of virtually everything he’s produced to date, the book is a testament to Fletcher’s stubborn, stunning originality. From the beginning (early images are dated 1997), bucking all contemporary trends, he’s worked small, at a modest, intimate scale that concentrates the intensity of the results. Photographing himself, his intimates, and charged, eccentric still life arrangements before paint-slathered studio walls, Fletcher often seems to be invoking and exorcizing demons, losing control and seizing it again – all with the furious vivacity and mordant humor of an outsider artist.
Best of 2016
Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.
Kristine Potter: Dark Waters
A female perspective threads its way through Potter’s photographs, drawn from the tradition of Murder Ballads, in which women are invariably the victims.
The Shifting Borders of Photojournalism and Fine Art Photography
Disturbed by the lack of a visual record of Americ...
Roe Ethridge: It's Personal
At a time when youth and age seem to be blending i...
Victor Burgin Revisits Photopath
The influential artist and writer reinstalls a landmark work for a new generation of viewers.
Photo-Poetics: Works Both Allusive and Elusive
With nearly two billion images posted each day on ...
Fazal Sheikh: Creating Common Ground
About 15 years ago, I came across Fazal Sheikh’s s...
Rosamond Purcell’s Cabinet of Curiosities
On the occasion of her first retrospective at the Addison Gallery, the photographer speaks to Lyle Rexer about photographing natural-history specimens in the “kingdom of the dead.”
Eight Photographs. Eight Ways to Contemplate the Climate Crisis
In a special feature, photograph magazine asked eight professionals in the field of photography to each select a single photograph related to the climate crisis that resonated with them in the last year.
Interview: Michelle Dunn Marsh and Sylvia Plachy
Michelle Dunn Marsh, the founder of Minor Matters, the Seattle-based photography book publisher, has championed many photographers over the years.
Image and Object: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner
Three notable shows in Northern California this summer provide examples of how sculpture, and the idea of sculpture, are explored in photo-based work: Erin Shirreff, Sara VanDerBeek, and Catherine Wagner each make photo-based art and objects that are deeply informed by sculptural concerns.
Rough, Blurred, Out of Focus: A Closer Look at Provoke
As Japanese photography has found itself in favor ...