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Siemens 2

New Topographics photographers in America and Germany in the 1970's had different approaches to their landscape photography.  For instance, Lewis Baltz and the Bechers were  both documenting transformation of environment but the former was critical and Bernd and Hilla were not.  Personally I was surprised to find myself feeling an emotional reaction when being up close where there had been fresh destruction of fields and woodlands to make way for new development. But ideologically I do not regard my photographing of it to be a comment on it, but instead just an observation of the appearance of major transformation.  I found Baltz's work extraordinary but eventually weakened somewhat by his declared position when I discovered it.  I had actually been stimulated by his lack of sentimentality in his approach (compared to Ansel Adams et al) with images that I thought were not dictating a viewpoint to me.  Similarly photographers like Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus revealed so much without tying up the meaning.

Being told what to think isn't such a good strategy in art (as in any area of life), whereas simply showing information in a fairly objective way and hoping it engages is more respectful and also more collaborative.  The subtext may be embedded, perhaps almost to the point of being hidden or even lost at that precise photographic moment of looking, but the personal motivation for making those images remains intact and vital.

Any of my topographic photographs of areas of excavated and bulldozed earth merely reflects my enquiry into transformation (an area of personal interest as a transvestite) and which also includes the legacy of my parents relationship to land, where both were from a rural background in Ireland and also later when my dad was eventually labouring on it in the UK.