Tract House #17 1971

Lewis Baltz made this gelatin silver print, "Tract House #17", during the New Topographics movement. It looks almost like it was printed using a laser printer, or even a xerox machine, capturing this building with its strange combination of flatness and depth. I can imagine Baltz searching for these kinds of buildings, walking around these new developments trying to capture that sense of being utterly new and anonymous. He must have seen something special in it, something about its simple shape or its location, or maybe it was just the way the light hit it. The photograph has a very subdued palette, and the textures are subtle. Like a sketch, the work plays with the ideas around seriality and industrialisation as so many artists were doing at the time, from Ed Ruscha to Bernd and Hilla Becher. Artists are always inspiring one another's creativity, passing on ideas like a secret language across time and space. And it’s a language that embraces ambiguity, because the best art always leaves room for us to bring our own interpretations and feelings.