Blog Prompt #13

Human-Made Space.

In the past, photographers who were interested in how humans impacted the natural landscape grouped together to form the New Topographics. “"New Topographics" signaled the emergence of a new photographic approach to landscape: romanticization gave way to cooler appraisal, focused on the everyday built environment and more attuned to conceptual concerns of the broader art field.”http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibTopo.aspx

In addition, at the same time in history artists created (and still do create) “land art” in which they use materials found in the landscape to make sculptures that remain in the landscape. Many of these works now only exist as video recordings and photographic documents.

Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.

At first, I really had no ideas for this prompt. I initially thought of buildings, but there is no way I am going to build one just to photograph it. Way too much work for my lazy bones. With further thought, I got to thinking about snow. People make snowmen, snowhouses, snowwalls; just about anything can be made from snow. I also remembered an artist who makes large scale drawings in sand, so I think it would be interesting to try to do one in snow. It would be difficult to photograph, since I do not have access to a helicopter or anything that would get me high enough to see it all. But for art's sake, I think it would be a nice idea. To execute it, I would wait for a large snowfall, and then draw in it either towards the end of the storm, or early enough before people would be around. I would photograph the initial design, and then come back later and see how people have interacted with it. I'm sure not everyone would notice, or even care, so there would be the sense of destruction and impermanence within it.