National Centre for Meteorological Research, Grenoble by Ozgun Eksioglu

National Centre for Meteorological Research, Grenoble

The lines connect at the center of the room, on the ventilators. The energetic colors fit the theme of the warehouse where there is constant electricity usage. But the picture is not completely positive, because of the dominance of beige color.

Lewis Baltz by Ozgun Eksioglu avec Tilbe Cana Inan

"New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" is the title of an exhibition that epitomized a key moment in American landscape photography.
For “New Topographics” William Jenkins selected eight then-young American photographers: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topography

LEWIS BALTZ
Lewis Baltz (born 1945 in Newport Beach, California) is a visual artist, philosopher. He was a major force in the NEW TOPOGRAPHICS movement in American photography and devised a technique that is cool, subtly considered, surgically executed and ironic.

Baltz's photographs in "New Topographics" consisted entirely of images of an industrial warehouse complex in Southern California. Tightly composed photographs of blank concrete walls and prefabricated buildings, the images convey a sense of the claustrophobia and anonymity of urban life.

His apparently expressionless, but obsessive, recording of industrial deserts takes on metaphorical overtones as a representation of an American wasteland. His work in the 1990s reflects his interest in surveillance and cybernetics.
- cybernetics: science of communication and automatic control systems in relation to both machines and living things. http://www.answers.com/topic/lewis-baltz

Baltz alternated panoramic views of the horizon with photographs of construction sites, trailer parks, and city streets to show an open landscape slowly being devoured.

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/02/q3/0906-artmus.htm

http://www.wirtzgallery.com/bios/bio_baltz.html

Land Art by Gokhan Demir

“Land art, Earthworks, or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape; rather the landscape is the very means of their creation. The works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works, created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents.

Land art is to be understood as a protest against the artificiality, plastic aesthetics and ruthless commercialisation of art at the end of the 1960s in America. Exponents of land art rejected the museum as the setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects which were beyond the reach of the commercial art market. Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy patrons and private foundations to fund their often costly projects. With the sudden economic down turn of the mid 1970s funds from these sources largely dried up.”
“Land Art” 1 December 2008
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art>
Soren Harward. Spiral Jetty from atop Rozel Point
December 2008.

Christo & Jeanne Claude by Gokhan Demir

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are a married couple who create environmental installation art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long curtain called Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma counties in California, and most recently The Gates in New York City's Central Park.

Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to make the world a "more beautiful place" or to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. They achieve this by creating unique projects like wrapping buildings and bridges. They spend lots of time and effort in order to prepare their projects.

Subject&details are like newly created by Christo and Jeanne (e.g wrapping of buildings). Camera angle usually helps their subjects to look larger and more effective by making buildings even larger.

“I should repeat that our projects are not works of painting or sculpture but have elements of urbanism and architecture. Also, the temporal character of the project is an esthetic decision. I and Jeanne-Claude would like our projects to challenge and question the people's notion of art. The temporal character of the project challenges the immortality of art. Is art immortal? Is art forever? Is building things in gold and silver and stones to be remembered forever? It is a kind of naiveté and arrogance to think that this thing stays forever, for eternity. It probably takes greater courage to go away than to stay. All these projects have this strong dimension of missing, of self-effacement, that they will go away, like our childhood. our life. They create a tremendous intensity when they are there for a few days. When they are there for 14 days, they create an urgency and sympathy because they are going to go away, they will disappear. All this is translated into a nomadic quality, like the tribes in the Sahara and Tibet. It is translated by the biggest amount of material in this project. This project has fabric, ropes, steel, aluminum, but the biggest amount is the fabric, the cloth. The cloth is the principal element to translate the vulnerability, the temporariness and the fragility of the work, very much like a nomadic tribe that moves through the desert. They fold their tents and overnight they could build an entire village and the next day they would be gone. This is why this project is prepared off-site for several months, but the final installation is a very fast, very fresh operation.”

“The important thing to see is how we really moved to the outer space. Everything in the world is owned by somebody: somebody designed the sidewalks, or the streets, even the highway, somebody even designed the airways. 24 hours around the clock, we move in a highly precise space designed by politicians, urban planners, and of course that space is full of regulations, ownerships, jurisdictions, meanings. I love that space. We go in that space and we create gentle disturbances in that space. Basically, we are borrowing that space and use it intricately for a short time.”


Christo and Jeanne-Claude prepared for their next project, "The Umbrellas". Then the plan was to have yellow and blue umbrellas set up in California and Japan at the same time. In December 1990, after much preparation, the first bases for the screens were laid. At the bases 80 cm long anchors were fastened to the ground to withstand tensions of 1,500 kgf (15 kN). In September 1991 the screens were brought to their places by 2,000 workers. In order to preserve the countryside, the bases were transported to the site by helicopter. The final cost of the project totaled $26 US million. By 7 September, 1,340 blue screens in Ibaraki and 1,760 yellow screens at the Tejon Ranch in southern California had been set up; the exhibition opened on 9 October 1991. In total, 3 million people saw the screens, each measuring 6 meters in height and 8.66 meters in diameter. The umbrellas became a huge tourist attraction, finding use as everything from picnic spots to wedding altars.

<http://www.mdam.ch/basquiat/images/christo3.jpg>

Claude, Christo and Jeanne, Interview.Journal of Contemporary Art, Inc.,
http://www.jca-online.com/christo.html

Ddecco. 1991 Umbrella Project(Japan)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Umbrella_Project1991_10_27.jpg>

<http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2002/christo/images/large/74.jpg>
“Christo and Jeanne Claude” 1 December 2008
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude>

Ansel Adams by Nazlı Erel

Who is Ansel Adams?

Ansel Easton Adams was a photographer, mainly known for his black-and-white photographs, photography of the West and Yosemite National Park. The name of the famous photographer is associated with the Sierra Club and f/64 Group, that both played important roles in the environmental photographer’s life.
Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in February 20, 1902. Adams was exposed to the beauty of the environment in his childhood days, beyond the Golden Gate. Later on, nature became his major subject and muse in photography. In 1919 Adams had his first contact with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club was dedicated to preserving the nature. In 1928, Ansel Adams, a strong environmentalist who took landscape photograhy to its conclusion and represented nature’s idealized beautiful side, became the official photographer of the club. His first photographs were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin. Adams’ crystal clear images of the West are depicted as “timeless” and “stunning”.
He was also the member of the f/64 group that was named after the smallest aperture setting on a camera. As the group stated in their manifesto “Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are striving to define photography as an art form by simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods.”
Ansel Adams along with famous photographers of the time like photographers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, founded this group. With his clear, black and white photographs of the nature, he became a symbol of Yosemite National Park. Adams did not inclde human figures in his photographs, which was something he was criticized for. In 1968, he was awarded the Conservation Service Award, the Interior Department's highest civilian honor. Alongside being a famous photographer of the West, Ansel Adams also left a trace in history as a devoted environmentalist, who tried to increase the consciousness about the environment.

Ansel Adams and Photography:

The Yosemite National Park played an important role in Ansel Adams’ life. It is the place where he was exposed to the beauty of the landscape, had met his wife, and prodeuced his well known landscape photography. The image above is an example of that. As Adams states in his own words "That first impression of the valley—white water, azaleas, cool fir caverns, tall pines and stolid oaks, cliffs rising to undreamed-of heights, the poignant sounds and smells of the Sierra… was a culmination of experience so intense as to be almost painful. From that day in 1916 my life has been colored and modulated by the great earth gesture of the Sierra.". Here he represents a black-and-white image from the park. The black-and-white photographs have become almost like a signature of Ansel Adams’ in years. Moreover the image is not blurred at any place. It is focused very neatly and it looks crystal clear, which is a characteristic of f/64 Group’s members’ photography. Even though Ansel Adams used his photography for commercial reasons at first, for example for the commercials of Sierra Club, then his work turned into pieces of fine art as time passed.

Bibliography:
1) Ansel Adams & The Sierra Club, About Ansel Adams.12/07/2008.
http://www.sierraclub.org/history/anseladams/
2) Group f/64. 12/07/2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_f/64
3) Ansel Adams. 12/07/2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams
4)Ansel Adams in Yosemite. 12/07/2008.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.indy.org/files/events/ansel-adams-yosemite.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.indy.org/indianapolis/web/jsp/whattodo/detail.jsp%3Fc%3D12590640:rss&h=280&w=338&sz=49&tbnid=mK-RWzmgvNUJ::&tbnh=99&tbnw=119&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dansel%2Badams%2Bphotos&hl=en&usg=__HD83g2It0AFiBk_WQK9ZP79lioI=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&cd=1

Robert Adams by Burak Aydin & Erdi Tugmaner

Robert Adams

Robert Adams is one of the luminaries among the landscape photographers. He especially has a prominence with his scenes of “the American West”; California, Colorado, Oregon. His photographs mostly exhibit the landscapes, which are transformed by the effects of civilization. Therefore they usually contain the image of natural beauty both with the signs of exploitation and so the degrading motives accordingly. So a landscape is considered with the solid affects of the urbanization and the industrial growth; then the audience may easily observe the malevolent affects of these notions on natural beauties. Without a need for any speculations, it is so obvious, that the reason of all the deterioration of the environment is the man.

“What I hoped to do was to show what seemed to be going terribly wrong in a place that I cared a lot about, but simultaneously to suggest that there are elements that remained safe, clean, beautiful, and would never be destroyed. I really wanted to talk about both those things at once.'” As he mentions here as well, by showing the ugly vision of civilization, within the diminishing beauty of nature, Adams successfully expresses the impact of human activity on nature. Although the target is human; Adams photography usually devoid the human subject, but it better expresses the traces of human existence, such as the “smoke of civilization,” industrial constructions, elements of urbanization etc. The disturbance on the integrity of this beauty creates skepticism, by making the audience, to start questioning themselves. It is Adam’s aim, which is truly succeeded, that the audience accepts the idea, which shows himself as the subject of all the bad causes. This leads the audience to consider the place he lives and his affect on that area, so the artist’s goal for enlightening the audience is achieved.

Although, Adams focuses of the human’s effect on environment, the beauties of nature covers a dominant part over the images. By emphasizing the remaining vitality, he insistently shows us, that the beauty of the environment is not entirely disappeared. This is a very important point, mentioned by Adams, which keeps the hope alive for audience, so they never give up trying to come up with solutions.

The Photographs

When the audience is looking at Adams’ makings, the first thing he will notice is that he tries to show the beauty of the nature and the effects of urbanization on environment. We, as a group, are mostly impressed the photographs, which he tried to show effect of so-called technology on nature. He does a brilliant job in showing those outcomes of urbanization and at the same time tries to prove the nature is still beautiful.


In the photo “Crossed Palms”; his aim is to mention there are stil beauties left in the nature. Those trees are standing together, against everything about “modernization”. If there were just one tree standing like that, the photo would lost nearly all of its meaning but now this piece means a lot to the audience. This one took a place in an exhibit of Adams and about this exibit Adams says: 'What I hoped to do was to show what seemed to be going terribly wrong in a place that I cared a lot about, but simultaneously to suggest that there are elements that remained safe, clean, beautiful, and would never be destroyed. I really wanted to talk about both those things at once.'


“He employs camera and film to express his respect for the land and to record how urban and industrial growth have changed it, all the while insisting that beauty in the environment has not entirely disappeared.” says Karen Freedman, about Robert Adams. In the piece, Burning Oil Sludge”, he portrays the effect of industry over the nature. It is not possible to stay calm against what had happened there. Actually that is the way he wants us to feel; angry and upset about those consequences and since he achieves that, we can say he is very successful.

Lastly, in the “Housing Tract”, this tract house symbolizes the industrial growth (this symbolizm can be seen in his other photographs too). Again in this one the evil (industry) is presented and as usual he is trying to answer the question of “Why people work so much to damage the nature?” and “What is their problem with it?”. He tries to increase the awareness of people and wakes them up in an artistic way. As a conclusion, it is very easy for us to say that he makes a great job in showing the other side of “growth” and it is very hard not to get impressed by his photographs.



Art21, Inc. “Robert Adams – Biography.” 2001 – 2007





<http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/adams/index.html>

Freedman, Karen. “Robert Adams - Landscapes of Harmony and Dissonance.” 2003 – 2008.
<http://www.lasplash.com/publish/Los_Angeles_Entertainment_109/Robert_Adams_-_Landscapes_of_Harmony_and_Dissonance.php>

Siple, Ashley. “ROBERT ADAMS.” Museum of Contemporary Photography.2005 - .2008.
<http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/adams_robert.php>

Richard Long by Serhat Arica

Richard Long

Richard Long was born on June 2, 1945 in England. He is a photographer and he is also known as a sculptor. He is an artist from the “Land Art” movement, which emerged in USA. He has traveled around the world and some of his photographs are based on the walks he has made.

In his photograph “A Line Made by Walking”, we can see that he did not simply take pictures of the environment around him. He has changed the environment around him. He has created this line by walking forward and backward in the field. By this line, he has created a sense of depth while photographing the landscape. Since his interventions would be sort-lived, the photographs he took would be the only records of such a view. ( www.tate.org.uk)


His Earthquake Circle is similar in the way that the circle is created by him. He has found some similar stones in order to create that shape. He has not photographed something he sees in the nature. Instead, he has created the view he wants. After creating the view, he takes the photograph of it and it remains the only record of that view.
Bibliography:

Tate. 10 Dec. 2008 .

Wikipedia. wikipedia. 10 Dec. 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20.

Picture 1 - http://www.artatswissre.com/
Picture 2 - http://www.wikipedia.org/

Postmodern Sculpture by Serhat Arica

Postmodern Sculpture

“ A redefinition of what constitutes sculpture: an opening of the sculptural object to the natural processes of weathering, ageing and deterioration.” 1 (Woods, 151)


Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is a good example of postmodern art. It is located on the shores of Great Lake, Utah. This scupture shows the minimalism of the postmodern sculpture. We can see that, the site of the sculpture is open to weathering and ageing. The spiral is built of salt and mud mostly. Smithson’s sculpture is succesful because he has observed the surface features of the area well and the place is well integrated with the environment around. (Woods, Tim)

Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty. 1970, 10 December 2008.




Bibliography:

1Woods, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism