"...Baltz turned his camera on the virtually featureless built environment of California, the nether places of new suburbs and the anonymous ambiguity of ordinary places, finding forms that presented anomie and boredom and the insidious inertness of a voracious consumerism.
He published his compositions to an astringent minimum, and proceeded to explore photographic style as on operation - as a conceptual and critical practice."
- Sheryl Conkelton
These are my two final images for presentation. I tried to work from the above quote from the back of 'The Tract Houses'. I'm not sure I have really achieved images that could fit seamlessly into Baltz's book, even with the allowance of location and time differences.
One thing that irritates me about these images is that there is no true white. However this is not just me being crap, in many of the images in 'The Tract Houses' there is no true white. Instead the images look quite dirty.
Title:
- Simply states what the work is. Refective of work in that it is what it is
Layout:
- Laid out like a gallery - plain white pages with a single image
- Images on the right handside (the flat side when the book's on a table) with the infomation on the left hand page
- Nothing to detract the eye from the work
- The book reflects the images?? Stark. Truthful.
- Essay at the front to introduce the work, and a biographical essay at the back including quotes from Baltz
- Also everything is in German, as it was published there - is this something to do with the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf??
- Tract = expanse of land. Refers to the extent of the space
- Realism??
- After WWII there was a push for normality... does it reflect this? Maybe not. More so the vast growth
- Narrative-Documents
- Viewer interpreations...?
Context
- Would aid yo in seeing depth in images
- Set in context of time
Reccuring Themes and Ideas:
- Very Stark
- A lot of texture (although the images are often quite plain)
- Abstract?
- Gives glimpses of 'reality' (life)
- Occasional representations of people living in the houses (see above)
- Repetition of windows and doors - WHY? Do they mean something?
- Mostly very 'plain' images
- Bleak... Depressing..?
Sequencing
- I can't see a clear theme that determines the sequencing of the images
- A mix of very straight, close ups of walls as well as pulled back images of whole houses at angles as well as the odd interior