While Lewis Baltz is perhaps best known for his New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California series, Park City might be a better candidate as the magnum opus of the artist’s early work. Not merely representative of the stylistic and conceptual framework of the photographic movement he helped to define, Park City is the single most exhaustive and far-reaching visual criticism of 1970s-era American real estate development: the book is thus the New Topographics document par excellence.
The book’s 102 plates (Baltz defines the Series as “a sequential work of 102 elements”) first take the viewer through overall site views that set up a jarring contrast between the mountains (already carved up for the ski area) and the freshly built condominiums and houses that soon will take over the landscape.
As you go through the photos, you will note the seamless shift in focus as they move through all stages of the city’s development. The pictures showcase the excavation and crushing of the mountains before the construction. Earth mounds and construction debris denote a pitiful shell out of the preexisting sceneries.
€ 450,00
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