Lost in L.A.'s Topography

So I finally got to leave town for a week after several too-busy months of translating, writing, editing, and teaching. I went to Los Angeles for the annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association, presented my paper, and then got so excited about exploring new (to me--including the most amazing Museum of Jurassic Technology) and familiar parts of the city that I FORGOT to see New Topographics at LACMA, a recreation of the highly influential and much-hated 1975 show of the same name. Many of the photographers from back then are represented, including the Bechers, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel, Jr., and Frank Gohlke. What must have triggered much of the negative criticism thirty years ago--the surprising perspectives on industrial, urban, and suburban sites that emphasize banality and lack of emotional engagement with the object, usually shown in color--is now pretty much standard and has influenced a generation and a half of photographers in the U.S. and beyond, many of whom I admire and try to learn from.

New Topographics is scheduled to travel to a few more cities; in each one, local photographers and organizations will be featured. In Los Angeles, the Center for Land Use Interpretation is showing the video installations Oil Landscans. Not surprisingly, the Center is located next door to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.


And continuing with the theme of oil and land use, Edward Burtynsky, another favorite photographer of mine, is showing his project Oil concurrently at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam and at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. I first became aware of him through his large-format landscapes that often showed destruction and desolation--what he termed Manufactured Landscapes. His work may not exactly fit the city focus of this blog, but the wounds and scars on the landscapes he documents are the result of human industrial activity, of which cities benefit the most. Oil consists of 55 large images of drilling, processing, transporting, and using oil.

Oil will also be shown in several other cities over the next two years.

Museum of Jurassic Technology: Sabine Schmidt