mon with other things that resemble it. That is,
things may be grouped together by how they look,
and their behavior may adhere to certain estab-
lished precedents.
The use of the term typology within photography
has come to refer to a methodical image-making
approach that expands on the general description
outlined above. The term can be used both descrip-
tively, summarizing a group of images in retrospect,
and predictably, anticipating the style a given artist
will employ to record a particular subject. Further-
more, it can, by extrapolating from earlier photo-
graphs, signal a type of subject matter that a given
artist would be likely to portray. Broadly speaking,
typological photographs are identified by an empiri-
cal, straight-forward appearance, with great detail
and clarity in the prints. They are often displayed or
reproduced in series; one important element of a
typological project is its open-ended quality of com-
parative investigation. A given image in a typology
implies that there will always be another example of
what you have seen, and that juxtaposing the new
and the old will reveal meanings inherent in each
individual image, and in the series overall.
Origins and Precedents
The Germans Bernd and Hilla Becher introduced
the term ‘‘typology’’ to the vocabulary of photogra-
phy in the subtitle of their first monograph,Anon-
yme Skulpturen: Eine Typologie technischer Bauten;
the Bechers’ images of blast furnaces, water towers,
frame houses, coal mine heads, and other industrial
structures, begun in 1957 and usually presented in
sequences or grids, are the most widely recognized
examples of typological photography. But there is
evidence of typological photography dating back to
the beginning of the twentieth century and before.
An important, often-cited model is the work of
Euge`ne Atget, who brought the patient, passionate
thoroughness of an historical cataloguer to his sys-
tematic documentation of Parisian architecture.
August Sander provides what may be the definitive
model for typology; his open-ended attempt in the
1910s and 1920s to record of ‘‘the face of our
time’’—that is, a collective portrait of all types of
people inhabiting Weimar Germany—carries all the
methodology, the serial, open-ended nature of the
working system, and the compelling semblance of
objectivity that characterize the contemporary stan-
dard-bearers of type photography. Sander was a
typologist in all but the name. Also serving as typo-
logical antecedents from Germany are the photo-
graphers who worked under theNeue Sachlichkeit
(usually translated as ‘‘new objectivity’’) banner,
including Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-
Patzsch. Renger-Patzsch, who presented his spare,
frontal esthetic in his influential bookDie Welt ist
scho ̈n (The World is Beautiful)(1928), Blossfeldt
(seeUrformen der Kunst[1925], published in the
United States asArt Forms in Nature[1929]), and
Sander are united in their apparent insistence on the
predominance of subject matter as the principle
cause for making a photograph, and the creation
of straight, unmanipulated photographs to record
and convey their impressions. The work of the
American Walker Evans, specifically its apparent
transparency or authorlessness, is also cited as a
model for contemporary typologists.Examples and Parallels
Younger artists, born in the 1940s and 1950s fol-
lowing the Bechers (and in many cases instructed by
them in courses at theStaatliche Kunstakademiein
Du ̈sseldorf beginning in 1976), have carried out
typological investigations into a variety of subjects.
California-based painter Ed Ruscha’s 1960s book-
works, collections of photographs almost comple-
tely described by their titles—Twenty-six Gasoline
Stations(1962),Thirty-four Parking Lots(1967),
Every Building on the Sunset Strip(1966), for exam-
ple—are clearly in line with the goals of typology.
American photographer Roger Mertin recorded
extensive series of trees (in both orchards and as
featured players in Christmas activities), basketball
backboards, and libraries, especially those funded
in the United States and Canada by Andrew Car-
negie. Lynne Cohen has documented interior spaces
designed for scientific observation and for firearms
testing. Bechers’ prote ́ge ́Candida Ho ̈fer has used a
hand-held camera to record impressions of large
meeting halls, empty of people but full of chairs
that often provide an anachronistic contrast to
their surroundings. Fellow Bechers’ student Tho-
mas Ruff’s enormous portraits of classmates at the
Du ̈sseldorfKunstakademiepay homage to August
Sander’s catalogue of types, while paring down his
environmentally descriptive scenes to wall size
approximations of passport photographs. These
five artists, plus Judy Fiskin, Thomas Struth, and
the Bechers, are presented by the exhibition and
catalogueTypologies(1991), to date the most prob-
ing and definitive consideration of this mode of
photographic practice. Essays by curator Marc
Freidus, James Lingwood, and Rod Slemmons pro-
vide a range of perspectives on the history, mean-
ing, and implications of typological photography.TYPOLOGY