zona landscape. Resembling contemporary abstract
paintings, they were admired by the Surrealists.
After 1950, a number of photographers working
in America became interested in societal conditions.
They documented figures in their surroundings in a
laconic, unsentimental way. After training as a
photojournalist, the Swiss e ́migre ́ Robert Frank
traveled across the country taking informal photos
of lonely spaces and isolated individuals. The result-
ing book,The Americans(France, 1958; America,
1959), with its foreword by the Beat writer Jack
Kerouac, seemed to articulate the alienation many
felt during the Cold War.
A movement in photography known as ‘‘Social
Landscape,’’ dominated photography in the 1960s
and 1970s. It was named for important exhibitions,
one of which wasToward a Social Landscape(1966,
George Eastman House), organized by the photo-
grapher-curator Nathan Lyons. Discontent with
American popular culture in the post-war period,
questioning the conventions of good picture mak-
ing, and influenced by Frank’s The Americans,
photographers such as Bruce Davidson and Garry
Winogrand took random-seeming pictures of the
often inscrutable behavior of individuals and
groups. In England, Raymond Moore and Tony
Ray-Jones worked from a similar outlook. Lee
Friedlander’s imagery often included himself, and
reflected the isolated individual on the street and in
hotel rooms. Diane Arbus’s photographs, some of
which appeared inEsquire magazine, portrayed
society’s outcasts, the disabled, and the grotesque
antics of public behavior. Her bizarre pictures are
thought to express the outrage associated with con-
temporary societal pressures and with the celebra-
tion of a radical individuality in this period. Bruce
Davidson’s series of ghettos and New York City
gang teenagers, and Danny Lyon’s civil rights pro-
testors, prisoners, and motorcyclists are seen as
part of the ‘‘New Journalism’’ style of photography
prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. It was thought to
be the pictorial equivalent of the hard-hitting repor-
tage of contemporary journalists such as Norman
Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter Thompson. In a
similar vein, Mary Ellen Mark made moving but
unsentimental photographs of homeless children.
European photography between the 1920s and
1960s was marked by imaginative uses of documen-
tary photography. Although there were progressive
photos published in the flourishing picture maga-
zines, many photographers also published influen-
tial books of their works. Brassaı ̈(the pseudonym
of Gyulas Hala ́sz) became well known for his book,
Paris de nuit (Paris at Night)(1933), which docu-
mented the city’s picturesque and haunting night-
life. Another photographer working in Paris,
Robert Doisneau made lighter, more satirical docu-
ments of Paris and its strollers. Much European
photography reveals a social aspect. In Mexico,
Manuel A ́lvarez Bravo made Surrealist-inspired
documents of peasant life; Tina Modotti, Edward
Weston’s one-time partner, photographed peasants
with a revolutionary political outlook. In Germany,
Otto Steinert was influential in reintroducing an
experimental spirit to photography in the post-war
period. He was a founder of a movement called
‘‘Subjective Photography’’ and led an important
group called ‘‘fotoform’’ in the early fifties. The
Swiss Werner Bischoff made socially conscious
color imagery of poverty-stricken peoples. Josef
Sudek of Czechoslovakia is renowned for his still
lifes and images of Prague. From a younger genera-
tion, Jan Saudek makes innovative works that
recall nineteenth-century pictures. Mario Giaco-
melli’s images of Italian village life are noteworthy.
Japanese photographers have kept apace of western
developments and have brought an original aes-
thetic to their pictures. Eikoh Hosoe’s imagery is
more artistic than Takayuki Ogawa, who is known
for socially realistic works.Contemporary Photography
A different approach to the landscape was repre-
sented in a highly influential 1975 exhibition
entitled ‘‘New Topographics: Photographs of a
Man-altered Landscape’’ mounted by the Interna-
tional Museum of Photography and Film, George
Eastman House. Among the images represented
were those by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and the
German couple, Hilla and Bernd Becher, which
soberly depicted features of the industrial land-
scape, or the banal spaces and housing projects of
the American West. They seemed to be a reaction to
the highly subjective documentary work that was
made in the 1950s and 1960s. In a similar spirit of
coolness, the handful of photographers spear-
headed by Mark Klett who conducted the Repho-
tographic Survey Project (RSP) between 1977 and
1979 precisely documented 122 nineteenth-century
western survey sites.
After 1970, photographers manipulated the print
as an object in its own right. Recalling the nine-
teenth-century fondness for manipulating negatives,
photographers now explored all manner of manip-
ulations. Along these lines, Jerry Uelsmann made
fantasy-filled combination prints in the 1960s.
Robert Heinecken and Ray K. Metzker made inge-
nious series and collages from photographic frag-
ments. Duane Michals explored the series in themesHISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TWENTIETH-CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS