Credit Crunch impact on the commercial side: Lewis Baltz

About Lewis Baltz

Born: 12th September 1945 in Newport Beach, California

He is a visual artist and he became a well known photographer in the New Topographic movement of the late 1970's.

Learning: Graduated from San Fracisco Art Institute in 1962

Gained a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate School.

Location: Now living in Paris and Venice.

His entire work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. His images describe the architecture of the human landscape, offices, factories and parking lots. His photographs are a reflection of control, power and effects by the human race.

He completed a trilogy of work that represents minimalistic images, Ronde de Nuit, Doctule Bodies and Politics of bacteria.

^{New Industrial Parks:}

^{Fifty-one images reconize space and allow the expression of new relationships}

^{between architecture, landscape and photography.}

^{The buildings are photographed in a way that captures both the opaque and the}

^{transparent. The photographs represent shapes and}

^{the condition of the building. The tension between the difficulty of the subject and}

^{the formal beuty of the resulting images}

^{gives the work its huge visual power.}

^{Ronde de Nuit:}

^{These images were taken between the years of 1967 through to the early 1970's.}

^{The series of photographs focus on the sides of}

^{warehouse sheds, stucco walls, empty billboards, and other geometric forms found}

^{in the postwar suburban landscape.}

^{He titled these works "Prototypes", by which he ment both the industrially made model}

^{structures scattered across California and the}

^{modern culture that generated them.}

^{How has this influenced my work?}

By researching Lewis work, It has made me even more aware at the fact that these images that I am producing need to be absolute accurate, from shapes, straight lines and to the layout of the image.

At the moment I feel that there are shapes appearing in my images but they stand out no way near to as much as the shape in Lewis's photographs. The way that I think that they work really well in his images is the fact that the images are over exposed and the contrast is boosted up, yet again dividing the dark from the light.

There also appears to be very few midtones in the black and white images, which make the tones stand out even more.

Maybe I should next time over expose the images by a stop or two when I take them. Then when I scan them on the computer, adjust the contrast accordingly to make the shapes stand out.

New Industrial Parks