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December 29, 2013
Whilst working on some 5x7 negatives from the archive for the Adelaide Book I came across the 1989 work of Lewis Baltz on Candlestick Point in California.
These are landscapes of destruction --a topography of the emptiness of random, damaged, remote places”. The photographs depict fallow land, where piles of rubble and waste accumulate in the middle of the prairie. Traces of technical land development – drainage channels and water dams – are visible. So we have a typical American theme: the development of a territory in the almost infinite prairie.
Lewis Baltz, untitled, from Candlestick Point, 1989
This series was photographed between 1984 and 1988, exploring in detail a landscape left nearly without any natural reference. It was created in an area between the airport and the ballpark south of San Francisco.
Lewis Baltz, untitled, from Candlestick Point, 1989
The work reminds me of what I was doing along the Port River with large format cameras.
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