new topographics influenced photography is the brutalism of photography and i'm obsessed 
if you're thinking this just looks like any other landscape photography, that's fair but that's only because this style was a huge turn and its influenced basically everything since. stuff _directly_ inspired / homages generally have a creepy vibe thats hard to pin down
andreas gursky is probably the best known contemporary photographer who doesn't do this style exactly per se but is definitely influenced by it and tweaked it. you've definitely seen the 99c store photo.
derrida's concept of hauntology is incredibly useful for understanding why these images are so powerful, & although hard to explain in a tweet, these images point to a tomorrow, a yesterday, their contradictions and tensions in the present, and the paths between them not taken
edward burtynsky's work focusing on the oil industry is really not subtle on those themes
this text is kind of heavy on the academic language but goes into really interesting detail about the ecological framings of these styles imaginations.glendon.yorku.ca/?p=3523
certainly. just to keep this threaded I'll reply to this tweet with some examples.
ansel adams is afaik the prototypical photographer of the style that the new topographics would later rebel against. he's famous for romantic photographs of american national parks showing nature largely undisturbed by man.
adams, at the time he was photographing national parks, was a conservationist - what we think of as environmentalism today was only in its smallest most initial stages then if it existed at all - and his work served to show why conservationism was a noble pursuit
by the time the new topographic photographers started defining their style, traditional focuses of conservationism were eclipsed, and folded into, activism around pollution, etc that we associate today with environmentalism in general, located more w/i cities and suburbs
i want to add at the end, or at least this stopping point, that there are some really great responses in the replies to these tweets about other photographers and more nuances of understanding these works - I'd quote tweet them to highlight but this thread would triple in length
