In landscape photography we encounter our relationship to the earth, our concepts of nature, and our own position to it. As photographers, as our awareness of our changing ecology grows, so, too, does our way of encountering and portraying our surroundings. In this course, students will develop an individual project that documents their immediate environs with an eye toward uncovering the many aspects of our changing landscapes — whether that’s a vast natural area or dense urban space, or one’s own backyard or neighborhood. You’ll develop instruments of exploration and discovery and look for your own, personal ways to take pictures of our ever-changing landscape. 

For inspiration, we’ll look at the work of the “new topographics” photographers — including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and Bernd and Hilla Becher — and their groundbreaking 1970s exhibition “Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape,” as well as work by Edward Burtynsky, Sally Mann, and photographers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. This class will meet every other week to allow time for students to work on their projects.

This is a new class, so it’s everyone — whether they’ve taken Stefan’s earlier landscape classes or not.