In 1975, the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape exhibition, organized by William Jenkins, at George Eastman House, changed the scope and aesthetics of American landscape photography. Ostensibly pared-back and banal, these black-and-white images formally presented the United States as a series of streets, suburban new builds, industrial sites and warehouses. None bigger than eleven inches by four or thirteen by thirteen, the photographs were also small and unassuming, refusing the grandness and potential sublimity of previous evocations of the US landscape. Rather than present the United States as a series of locations marked by regional and economic differences, photographers such as Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke, Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher now focussed on an increasing homogeneity across terrains, terrains often indeterminable in terms of actual locations, and, more often than not, eerily devoid of human presence. In Neil Campbell's words, the images were “unemotional, flat and appeared everyday, aspiring to ‘neutrality’ with a ‘disembodied eye.’” The New Topographics – according to such readings – differed from earlier depictions of the United States, moving away from the documentary focus on agrarian poverty and urban slums as seen during the Depression, as well as the humanist vision of postwar photographers such as Robert Frank. As William Jenkins put it in the original introduction to the exhibition, New Topographics was a study more “anthropological than critical,” one that would recentre everyday lived experience – not as a collection of individualized narratives, but as a cultural landscape marked by commercial interests above all.

中文翻译：

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美国地形学：成像国家景观

1975 年，由威廉·詹金斯在乔治·伊士曼故居举办的“新地形：人类改变的风景照片”展览改变了美国风景摄影的范围和美学。这些黑白图像表面上是精简和平庸，正式将美国呈现为一系列街道、郊区新建建筑、工业场所和仓库。这些照片不超过 11 英寸 x 4 英寸或 13 英寸 x 13 英寸，也很小且不张扬，拒绝了以前对美国风景的唤起的宏伟和潜在的崇高。Robert Adams、Frank Gohlke、Lewis Baltz 和 Bernd 以及 Hilla Becher 等摄影师现在不再将美国描述为一系列以地区和经济差异为标志的地点，而是专注于跨地形日益增加的同质性，地形的实际位置通常无法确定，而且通常情况下，令人毛骨悚然的是没有人的存在。用 Neil Campbell 的话说，这些图像“没有感情，平淡无奇，每天都出现，渴望以‘无实体的眼睛’实现‘中立’。”根据这样的解读，《新地形》不同于早期对美国的描绘，远离这部纪录片关注大萧条时期的农业贫困和城市贫民窟，以及罗伯特·弗兰克等战后摄影师的人文主义视野。正如威廉·詹金斯（William Jenkins）在展览最初的介绍中所说，“新地形学”是一项更“人类学而非批判性”的研究，它将重新审视日常生活体验——而不是作为个性化叙述的集合，