Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz (1998)

Lewis Baltz (born September 12, 1945 in Newport Beach , California - † November 22, 2014 in Paris ) was an American photographer .

life and work

Lewis Baltz is one of the most important American photographers who turned to unusual subjects in the 1970s and thus created a new photographic aesthetic ( New Topographic Movement ). Baltz lived in Paris and Venice .

Baltz studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (graduated in 1969) and the Claremont Graduate School (Master of fine Arts, 1979). From 1970 to 1972 he was a lecturer in photography at PamonaCollege (California) and at the California Institute of Arts, Valencia. Until 2003 he held teaching positions at various American and European universities, including the European Graduate School, and since 2004 he has also taught at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia.

Baltz's photography is considered to be a style-defining factor far beyond the USA. He became known for photographs that document the more ordinary on the outskirts, single-family housing estates, industrial areas or fallow landscapes deformed by humans. This approach can be described as an aestheticization of the everyday.

Lewis Baltz is classified as a topographic photographer in the USA because of his innovative landscape photography. Examples can be found in his photo books New Industrial Parks, San Quentin Point, Candle stick Point, Deaths in Newport.

Some of his photographic series are also characterized by a distinctly minimalist design. In the case of photographs of a single-family house, for example, the documentation only contains a few architectural elements, e.g. B. to an almost abstract photographic work of art.

Lewis Baltz settled in Europe in the late 1980s. It was here that Baltz began to present some of his photographs in large formats and increasingly turned to locations that are characterized by new technologies and whose clinical, deserted atmosphere he depicted (Sites of Technology).

Awards (selection)

• 1973/1976 scholarship from the National Endowment for the Arts
• 1977 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
• 1980 US-UK Bicentennial Exchange Fellowship
• 1991 Charles Pratt Memorial Award

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1971 Castelli Graphics , New York , USA
• 1974 Corcoran Gallery of Art , Rochester , USA
• 1980 Workshop for Photography , Berlin , Germany
• 1985 Victoria and Albert Museum , London , Great Britain
• 1990 Rule Without Exception. New York Institute of Contemporary Art , USA
• 1992 Ronde de Nuit. Musee National d'Art Moderne , Center Pompidou , Paris , France
• 1993 rule without exception. Fotomuseum Winterthur , Winterthur , Switzerland, and Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris , France
• 1995 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art , Humlebæk , Denmark
• 1998 Museum of Contemporary Art , Los Angeles , USA
• 2001 What if. Kunstverein Rüsselsheim and Norton Simon Museum , Pasadena , USA
• 2002 Canadian Center for Architecture , Yale University Art Gallery , University Art Museum of Princeton University (both USA) and Marburger Kunstverein
• 2005 Galerie Thomas Zander , Cologne , Germany
• 2006 Kunstverein Bremerhaven , Germany
• 2007 89/91 Sites of Technology. Galleria Civica di Modena , Modena , Italy and Galerie Thomas Zander , Cologne, Germany
• 2013 Albertina (Vienna) , Austria

Books

• 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 DC 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. Center George Pompidou, Paris 1992.
• Rule without exception. Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich / Berlin / New York 1993.
• The Dead of Newport Beach. Museum for 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 new industrial parks near Irvine, California / The new industrial parks near Irvine, California . Steidl, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-88243-318-3 .
• The Tract Houses, The Prototype Works, The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California. RAM Publications, 2005.
• Lewis Baltz at the - in the Albertina . Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-86335-658-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Lewis Baltz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Lewis Baltz in the catalog of the Art Library in Cologne
• George Eastman House

Individual evidence

1. ^ Anne Katrin Feßler: Photographer Lewis Baltz has died. In: The Standard . November 24, 2014.
2. ↑ Lewis Baltz Biography ( Memento of the original from May 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of The European Graduate School. Retrieved November 26, 2014.