Lewis Baltz born just one month after the termination of World War II, just at the dawn of the baby boomer generation. His parents migrated to the seaside side town of Orange County which was known for its rolling hills tree-lined creeks and irrigated orange grove. It was also the home of the famous right-winged politician, Richard Nixon. Orange County would soon become one of the fastest growing counties in North America during the 60's and 70's due to the economic rise of the United States. This paper will discuss Lewis Baltz’s forensic approach to documenting the change in the American landscape by focusing on California in particular, and as a result, changed the public's view of photography as a medium in art.
Baltz began taking photographs at age 12 and by 14 he landed himself a job at a local camera store. By the age 16, he was spending his time at the beatniks Laguna Beach where he eventually met photographer Paul Outerbridge and minimalist painter John McLaughlin who would later inspire Baltz’s own stark imagery from his black and white geometric abstractions composed of mostly rectangles. During the early 1960’s when Baltz was just out of high school he became interested in architecture, but instead of attending college he had favored the apprentices’ approach. This consisted of Baltz starting off by doing all the grunt work as a construction laborer. This led to him doing jobs such as cleaning, digging holes pushing concrete and plastering walls. This is where he began to see the rise of balloon-frame houses and concrete slabs, which his photographic work would soon become famous for.
Then shortly after his ventures in the architectural business, the military draft for the Vietnam War began to loom over the American population. Baltz, wanting to avoid being drafted into the war he had enrolled himself into a junior college for a short time as being a student in an accredited school got you out of the army. From 1966 to avoid the military draft, Baltz studied photography at Art Institute in San Francisco which had allowed Baltz to continue his deferral and from there he had enrolled himself into a masters program about an hour outside of Los Angeles at Pomona College.
When asked about his experiences in art education Baltz said:
‘Thanks to Vietnam and the policy of deferring students from military service I became a scholar in a generation of scholars, I arrived as far as a master of fine arts, the terminal degree in studio work. If the war had dragged on for another few years I would have gone on for a doctorate in art history’
Lewis Baltz wasn’t the only person of this generation of baby boomers to explore the possibilities of the ever-burgeoning college industry, this generation of baby boomers were the hope of the parents who may have never made it past high school education, as prior to this generation that would have been the norm.
1967, aka ‘The Summer of Love’, Baltz began to take photographs of objects in which he noticed around him, many of these images were the subjects of buildings. in reality were something of an eyesore. This is where we begin to see the aesthetic that appears to battle with the traditional methods and subjects of photography. He created approximately 50 or so images which he called ‘The Highway Series' now known simply as ‘Prototypes', all about six by nine inches in size. Here is where we begin to see the first influence of minimalism in his work which exemplified his earliest exploration of conceptual photography. These images rather than recording historical information, these images appear flattened making the commercial spaces anonymous, interchangeable and abstracted.
In his titled ‘Motel room, Central California Coast, April 1967’ which is part of the series of ‘Prototypes’, we see the subject of a common, inexpressive, roadside rest-stop which are still common today in the United States for truck drivers. The image features a bare, detached style of documentary photography and combines it with a stage-set atmosphere. The work appears to have a similar resemblance to the ‘HOTEL’ work by Wolfgang Tillmans which one cannot help but feel Lewis Baltz was the inspiration for. INSErT IMAGE
These ‘Prototype’ works were intended to be far from the simple culture of postwar America which generated these regular geometric forms. The term ‘Prototypes’ was given by Baltz to the series to represent ‘the replicable social conventions as well as model structures of replicable manufacture which was around at the time.’
Baltz was said to approach his image making with a sense of forensics stating that he was using a form of documentary photography of subjects in which he found both personally and visually relevant to his practice.
Baltz eventually moved forward with these work and began to create bodies of work around a theme from these images. The first ‘forensic’ approach to a series was his work which spanned over the course of 3 years from 1969-71, this series title ‘Tract Houses’ featured images in which he knew from his own personal experiences if not the whole population of the United States, because they were mostly everywhere in the country at this time. Its subject would be building sites. He would document the indifferent nature of middle-class American home which was still under construction.
For a subject in which could be considered somewhat bleak, Baltz’s approach to taking the images was one of a formal elegance of composition combined with the strong contrast of lights and darks and an underlying apathy. He would focus on what can only be considered a skeleton of the houses that American was producing at this time while lacking grace in its design.
Serial work is non-heroic. Series don’t build monuments, they describe graveyards. Bodies of work create thematic perspectives.
Tract housing, or otherwise known as cookie-cutter houses were housing that was derived from when the military-industrial complexes in the United States were leaning towards a service-based economy. Built on large amounts of landscaped landed, these houses appear to be identical clones of one another, with matching rear and front gardens that are equally spaced apart begin to lack individuality in a seemly endless ocean of these indistinguishable living areas. These homes were being built at an alarming speed and in vast amounts with about 30 units being built a day on average. These houses would span from the California coast to approximately 80 miles inland. The houses would range from $6,000 for the cheaper houses to around $100,000 for the more expensive houses (or estimated $90,000 to $1,500,000 in today's money). Although one would think the difference in these houses in terms of quality would be exponential, but the monetary difference in these houses would be from mostly either the size of the house or the view in which it was over-looking. All these houses were built with the same quality of construction and design all whilst being nothing special.
Baltz would travel from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border documenting the sameness in these places.
‘Let’s just say it was a very large step in undermining the notion of community. There was homogenous housing, where the people change on average once every seven years, also I think the California average( time) for divorce is the same, -maybe these figures relate in some way’
Although the appeal of an indistinguishable houses that one could get confused with their neighbours may seem a little unusual, there was a purpose for them, these houses were built in response to post World War II when the American Economy was booming and as a result everyone wanted their own little piece of the famous ‘American Dream’.
This is was Baltz was out to document, the new life of the middle class, one that could finally get it’s own slice of the American Dream in the form of a cookie cutter home.
During the mid to late 1960’s the art world was going in a drastic turn against what was once the norm, this was the era of Post-Modernism. The blank walls of the gallery were filled with the latest movement, which consisted of works which hinted at something greater outside the works. With movements such as Pop Art, Minimalist Art, Land Art and Conceptual Art all emerged to the forefront of the art world photography was still being viewed as what some would call a secondary medium. This was due to artists such as the Land Artists, for example, using the medium of photography as a form of documentation for they large-scale pieces which showed the viewer the process as well as the finished work. This also falls under a movement called Process Art which is a style of art in which the process of making the piece is just as important as the actual finished work itself. During this time Conceptual Art really started to take off, this is where artists started to suggest something bigger and more important than the actual work itself, such as revealing patterns of the evolving postwar economy, which went on to breed a new form of artist.
Although during this time photography wasn’t front and center of the art world Baltz contributed to broadening photography’s scope. Hanging works, which highlighted the capitalist way of the time. By using his work, he would display it in a grid-like pattern thus making him one of the earliest examples of photography being used as a conceptual medium.
In Baltz’s work ‘Tract Houses' where he showed the skeletal frames of the cookie cutter homes we see reference to everything from Process Art and Land Art, which was visible by his subjects with these man-made structure appearing in the landscape. In his presentation of his work he would go on to reference minimalism, this was shown by the grid-like structures he would create on the walls of the galleries thus highlighting how he wanted no image to be a stand-alone image of the series. He would focus on the concept as a whole being monumental rather than one individual structure being viewed monumental. Although in his work humanity was not seen, they were implied. Along with his repetition of subjects in his work of the soulless landscapes he would go on to create an almost surreal emotional response to his unemotional works at this time. Although the series was being admired by most for breaking the mainstream trends of photography, the photographic community, mostly rejected the body of work, as they did not know if they should classify it as a series or stand-alone images. This would be the beginning of a new breed of landscape photography and open the doors to a more conceptual use of the photograph as a medium.
In an interview in 2009, Lewis Baltz stated his own opinions on the photography world, he said:
‘Well, I loved the medium (photography) as a medium. I didn’t like the world of photography. I didn’t like the culture of photography. I think I feel the same way. I don’t think it’s changed. I don’t think the culture has changed as much as it thinks it has, and my feelings about it haven’t changed either’
This outlook in which Baltz has shows that in his own opinion that there was (and in some cases still is) a difference between the world of photography and art. Somewhat viewing one as a form of ‘image making' and one as a genuine conceptual medium.
One of the changing of tides for photography as an artistic medium and for the career of Lewis Baltz was in 1971 when the first serious showing of Baltz’s unique investigative vision of the changes in landscape was in 1971, in the Pasadena Museum of Art (now known as the Norton Simon Museum) along with two other photo-artists based in Los Angeles Terry Wild and Anthony Hernandez. The show titled Crowded Vacancy, although it would be their first ever museum showing, the exhibit had introduced the American public to the new perception of the urban landscape, thus inspiring similarly themed exhibition around the United States.
One of these exhibitions was famous 1975 show New Topographics, which was held in the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. The term ‘new topographics ‘was first coined by the curator of the show, William Jenkins to help describe the arrangement of man-made objects in nature. The photographers which were featured at this show were Bernd & Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, Henry Wessle Jr, Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon, Joe Deal, John Scott, Stephen Shore and once again Lewis Baltz. With the success of Baltz’s previous show Crowded Vacancy, these photographers set out with the objective of to change the viewers perception of the landscape, which was engraved into the viewers mind during the height of the Cold War which was of an unspoiled American wilderness which was made famous by Ansel Adams. The goal of these new young photographers was to highlight the contrast, or the conflict for better words between humanity and nature.
The work which helps describe this the simplest would be the piece with the simple title of Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, California, 1973 by Robert Adams (who had no relation to Ansel Adams). The work can literally be divided into two separate image one shows in its foreground a mobile home park on the outskirts of Jefferson County featuring its hard-angular lines being beat on by sunlight giving a strong contrast of black and white, all while in the background we see the mountainous landscape of Jefferson County looking down over the mobile homes. Its soft unpredictable lines along with the moody sky composed and mostly greys and whites we can see a direct reference to the work of Ansel Adams with its unspoiled landscapes all whilst highlighting the conflict between humanity and nature.
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This work highlights the growth of environmentalism which is taking hold of the public consciousness
Baltz’s explanation for creating this blend of architectural and landscape images was that the use of architecture is a representation of the people who are living in a location during a particular time, he would photograph what he would call ‘Sub-Architecture’, places like the industrial park, and the unfinished home of California’s suburban outskirts. Stating that his fascination with sub-architecture was both a mixture of horror and attraction. This was due to that most of the built landscapes are not made by architects who build unique beautiful buildings but it’s made by developers and engineers due to economic reasons without any interruption. Once you leave the center of these cities and enter the suburbs all you see are areas that are as cheaply built structures as one can get, that are primarily built strictly for practical uses. This was the nature of the suburbs in post-war America.
These cheaply built areas were where Baltz had grown up, although he would go on to say that they do not count as an idea of ‘home’ to him. He explained that it was a form of ‘exorcism’ for him, that it was almost a way from him to distance himself from this landscapes in which he hated and was entirely powerless to improve. He would spend almost two decades spanning from the mid-1960's to the 1980's using his forensic approach to photography to analyze these middle-class areas which were taking an effect on both the natural landscape and is mind.
From an early age, it was clear Lewis Baltz had a key interest in photography as an artistic medium. Although if it wasn’t for the Vietnam draft it would be unclear as to if he would have achieved the success that his images have brought him.
Baltz had a distinct and innovative style for the time with his formal compositions of what he would call ‘sub-architecture’ that was cutting its way through the natural landscape of California from the 1960’s to the 1980’s as a result of the economic boom in the United States after World War II. He would assist in changing the viewers opinion of what photography can and cannot be and change the traditional outlook on photography that was made famous by the likes of Ansel Adams in the 1940’s which was focusing on the unaltered beauty of the American landscape. This change wasn’t just down to Lewis Baltz but it was also thanks to Bernd & Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, Henry Wessle Jr, Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon, Joe Deal, John Scott, Stephen Shore who were all a part of the New Topographics exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York in 1975.
Lewis Baltz would take on a unique way of looking at bodies of work. He would view serial work as something that doesn’t form monumentalities but would create a restricted perspective for the viewer. His 1969-71 body of work ‘Tract Houses’ would be a key example of how he would use this to his advantage, as no individual image was intended to stand out. Each image seamlessly moved into the next creating a lackluster atmosphere which was replication the suburban lifestyle in California during this time. This body of work, in particular, would receive mixed reactions, it was received with critical acclaim by the art world this was due to it breaking the mainstream trends. Although in the photographic community it was mostly rejected as they did not know if it should be classified as a series or one single piece of work.
It could be interpreted that Lewis Baltz focused on the cheaply made sub-architecture of the Californian suburbs as a form of fondness or nostalgia dating back to his early life. Although this was not the case, he would document this places as a form of escapism from a landscape that he had a strong dissatisfaction for and could not do anything to change.
It is apparent that Lewis Baltz has done a lot to change the public's perception of the photography as a fine art medium. From diverting the focus on traditional subjects such as ideological American landscapes to a full-blown conceptual medium in which can be taken seriously within the context of a fine art gallery.