The Road from Commonplace - Man-Altered Landscape Photography Post New Topographics

Lockwood, D (2026) The Road from Commonplace - Man-Altered Landscape Photography Post New Topographics. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

This practice-led research, The Road from Commonplace, investigates and explores the zeitgeist and the subsequent evolution of 'man-altered' or urban landscape photography from the landmark New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975) exhibition into a contemporary photographic and post-photographic context. With its formative title, the exhibition was curated by William Jenkins and marked a point of change in the world of landscape photography, but it also significantly underpinned the modern relationship between the art world and contemporary photography. Whilst the exhibition itself has been well documented because of its pervasive and substantial impact on photography, the analysis of the subsequent influence on photographic approach and aesthetics of the New Topographics Outlook has not. That lasting influence, without the exhibition’s original stance and perspective, has had a limiting effect on subject depiction and development within the genre of urban landscape photography. In response, this thesis investigates the notion of; can the photographic representation of the urban landscape, as influenced by the New Topographics Outlook, be shifted from a position at which its derivative approach is commonplace.
The original contribution to knowledge in the field comes from the development of a critical structure that investigates the exhibition's origins and intentions, explores its impact on proceeding photographic practice, and applies its critique, creating new progressive practice using traditional photographic and post-photographic principles. A structure underpinned by analytical investigations in the form of past and current literature surrounding the subject, and primary and secondary research explorations into contemporary practitioners and practice within the context of study. The outcomes of which inspired and created the three new practice pieces, Finding Fangorn (2016-17), The Allotments (2018-19) and The New West: Exploration of the Geological Parallel (2020). These were created using both traditional photographic practice such as large format film and cameras, and also further developing subject techniques using post photographic approaches, for example, questions of authorship and representation, with expanded audience engagement methods such as interactive website design and virtual reality. Importantly, the practice methodologies explore the traditional and original photographic Outlook of this genre, whilst maintaining aspects of the influences, motives, aesthetic statements, and sociopolitical integrity of the exhibition’s originators but re-presenting these using contemporary creative strategies. These outcomes, whilst without the exhibition’s original critical American urban development context, additionally update this position with contemporary environmental concerns and more autobiographically based artistic perspectives.
The research findings indicate that when the approaches and practice, as influenced by the Outlook, seem ostensibly stuck in a cycle of its repetition, the resultant exegesis and three practice outcomes have added new strategies and methods to the photographic portrayal of the urban or man-altered landscape. The photographic genre has maintained its key aesthetics and ideology since the exhibition in the 1970s, but each project here, supported by the critical structure to investigate different themes and concepts within the genre, creates original solutions that will encourage new generations of photographers to broaden their interpretation of the subject for the future.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	David Lockwood; New Topographics; man-altered landscape; landscape photography; urban photography,; environmental photography
Subjects:	T Technology > TR Photography
Divisions:	Art and Creative Industries
Date of acceptance:	1 June 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	26 May 2026
Date Deposited:	26 May 2026 15:14
Last Modified:	26 May 2026 15:14
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00028626
Supervisors:	Fallows, C and Fisher, S
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28626

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