New Topographics: The Show Everybody Hated

One common advice to novice street photographers is to photograph the same area, near home, over and over again. That would allow them to know the place intimately and develop their skills in a familiar environment without relying on the extraordinary for interest. Of course, this leads to boredom with the place. That boredom is what happens when a place stops being scenery and becomes what it actually is: buildings, streets, cars, everyday stuff. Following my Deadpan photography deep dive, I recognise the motivation behind a show that opened in Rochester, New York, in the autumn of 1975, even though almost nobody at the time knew what to do with it. The show was called New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape), and it ran from October 1975 to February 1976 at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House. William Jenkins, the assistant curator of 20th-century photography, organised it in consultation with Joe Deal, then the museum’s exhibitions…