‘Nature as Artifice’ and ‘New Topographics’ focus on human influence of the landscape
Eastman exhibits focus on how humans have changed the landscape
In 1609, Henry Hudson was praying hard for an easy sea route to the opulent, spice-laden Orient. Instead, he found a future hub of overpriced real estate and spicy Asian cuisine: Manhattan. His Dutch patrons soon began turning the bucolic island into one of the world’s most densely built-up cities.
Four centuries later, the Dutch are back in New York state for another shot at urban development. This time, their photographs have landed at George Eastman House. The touring exhibit, “Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape,” shows how their green country is becoming a futuristic patchwork of new designer cities.
These contemporary images were largely inspired by a 1975 show at George Eastman House. “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape” featured deadpan shots of American trailer parks, tacky motels and soulless tract houses.
That project has been enlarged and paired with the Dutch exhibit, enabling visitors to trace the evolution of a shared vision. Following Henry Hudson’s example, the voyage begins in New York state and delivers a rich but troubling cargo to the Netherlands.
“Nature as Artifice” presents some of the most alluring Dutch imports since George Eastman ordered tulips for his conservatory. These landscapes often are jaw-dropping in their colors, epic scale and surreal aura. They need this visual appeal — because the story they tell is sometimes sobering.
As with the 1975 images, these scenes seem to have been photographed after a neutron bomb wiped out the residents but left buildings intact. It makes you feel like an archaeologist, surveying a lost civilization that can be understood only through its artifacts.
“The landscape mirrors the culture,” says Amsterdam photographer Cary Markerink, recently visiting George Eastman House with fellow exhibitor Theo Baart. “We’re talking about people without showing them.”
He and Baart are displaying large-scale, apocalyptic shots of Dutch highways. Human presence is revealed only through the flash of red taillights. These people are permanently on their way to somewhere else.
“For Americans, the highway represents freedom,” says Markerink, 58. “Get your kicks on Route 66! Let’s throw our stuff in the trunk and move to a new life in Boston …. Glamour and romanticism: We don’t have that notion of the highway in the Netherlands.”
He and Baart are fascinated by modern city life, never pining for the verdant landscapes painted by classic Dutch artists.
“I consider them boring,” says Baart, 51, who grew up on farmland that’s now suburban sprawl. “No inspiration there for me.”
The exhibit’s 20 photographers take exuberant advantage of the Dutch landscapes’ artificial design, which translates into riveting geometrical or abstract compositions. The cities often were built on low-lying land reclaimed from the sea and protected by dikes.
The fields and woods of Almere, a city on a muddy delta facing Amsterdam, are captured with great charm by Marnix Goossens. Frank van der Salm photographs other new urban areas as glowing grids. His night scenes, deliberately out of focus, show street lights as giant strings of pearls.
But other photographers shoot despoiled sites with a jaundiced eye. Are they making environmental statements or finding beauty in disrupted nature? It depends on your viewpoint.
“They don’t judge negatively the influence of man on the landscape,” says Maartje van den Heuvel, the show’s curator. “For them, the subject is far more complex than it was for the photographers of the 1970s.”
Yet it’s hard not to detect notes of protest or spooky surrealism. Gert Jan Kocken, records the aftermath of a fireworks depot explosion in Enschede, which killed 22 people and leveled 400 homes in 2000.
One year later, the twisting piles of rubble look like rusty welts. By 2007, a jumble of mismatched office and apartment buildings has arisen on the site.
The exhibit’s most iconic (and otherworldly) photo depicts a climbing expedition. The group rides a boat to a concrete tower poking out of a waterway. Bristling with metal grips, it’s the only mountaineering challenge available in this flat terrain. Photographer Bas Princen shoots the thrill seekers in an eerie gray mist.
Such eye candy is missing from “New Topographics,” housed in an adjacent gallery. Its 10 photographers broke new ground in 1975 with their “anti-expressive” shots of American strip malls and faceless office parks.
“It was a radical departure from the landscapes that dominated American photography,” says Alison Nordstrom, the museum’s curator of photography. “Instead of Ansel Adams’ views of beautiful, unspoiled nature, we got an admission that humans had left their mark on the landscape.”
These photo pioneers may have succeeded too well. Today, the buildings they highlighted typify the worst of urban sprawl. The black-and-white images prompt a knee-jerk revulsion, reinforced by the monotonous simplicity of their composition. We see plenty of Route 66 — and there are no kicks.
Still, “New Topographics” was such an influential show that the museum will send its latest version to eight venues in the United States and Europe. Aptly, its next-to-last stop will be the Fotomuseum Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Somewhere, Henry Hudson is beaming.
If you go
What: “Nature as Artifice” and “New Topographics,” paired photo exhibits conveying a modern vision of landscapes.
When: Through Aug. 16 for “Nature as Artifice;” through Sept. 27 for “New Topographics.”
Where: George Eastman House, 900 East Ave.
Admission: $10 ($8 for seniors, $6 for students, $4 for children ages 5 to 12).
Call: (585) 271-3361.
Web: www.eastmanhouse.org.
