Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz ( born 1945 in Newport Beach, California) is an American photographer.

Life and work

Lewis Baltz is one of the important American photographers who turned in the 1970s until then unusual subjects and so a new photographic aesthetic created (New Topographic Movement / New topographical movement). Baltz lives in Paris and Venice.

Baltz studied at the San Francisco Art Institute ( 1969 completion ) and the Claremont Graduate School ( Master of Fine Arts, 1979). From 1970 to 1972 he was a lecturer in photography at PamonaCollege (California ) and the California Institute of Arts, Valencia. Until 2003, he has taught at various American and European universities. Since 2004, Baltz Professor at the Instituto di Universatario Architecture de Venezia ( Venice).

Baltz's photography is far beyond the United States as influential. He became known for his photographs documenting the rather ordinary on the outskirts, single-family settlements, industrial areas or man- deformed fallow landscapes. This approach can be described as an aestheticization of everyday life.

Lewis Baltz is classified as topographical photographer in the U.S. due to its innovative landscape photographs. Examples can be found among others in his photo books New Industrial Parks, San Quentin Point, Candlestick Point stick, Deaths in Newport.

Some of his photographic series are also characterized by a distinct minimalist design manner. In the photographs, for example, a family home, the only documentation less architectural elements, for example, leads to an almost abstract photographic art.

Towards the end of the 1980s settled Lewis Baltz in Europe. Here Baltz began his photographs to present partly as large formats and increasingly turned to scenes that are marked by new technologies and their clinical deserted atmosphere he represents (Sites of Technology).

Awards (selection)

Exhibitions (selection)

Books (selection)

  • New Topographics: Photographs of a Man - Altered Landscape. Edited by William Jenkins. International Museum of Photography, Rochester 1975
  • New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California. Castelli Graphics, New York 1975
  • Maryland. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1976
  • Nevada. Castelli Graphics, New York 1978
  • Park City. Castelli Graphics and Artspace, New York 1981
  • San Quentin Point. Twelfth House, Berlin and Editions la Differèrence, Paris 1986
  • Lewis Baltz. Five Projects 1983-1988. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1992
  • Ronde de Nuit. Centre George Pompidou, Paris 1992
  • Rule without exception. Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich / Berlin / New York 1993
  • The death of Newport Beach. Museum of Photography Braunschweig, 1995
  • 55 Series. Scalo Verlag, Zurich 1996
  • The Politics of Bacteria, Docile Bodies, Ronde de Nuit. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 1998
  • The Tract Houses, The Prototype Works, The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California. RAM Publications, 2005
Topography National Endowment for the Arts London New Museum Norton Simon Museum Pasadena, California Yale University Art Gallery Modena Albertina Integrated Authority File
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