Corona del Mar

Lewis BaltzWW-1971-105242

1971·Gelatin silver print·14.8 × 21.1 cm (image/paper); 27.7 × 27.8 (mount)

<p>During and directly after his student years, Lewis Baltz made what he called Prototypes, photographs of recent residential and commercial “subarchitecture” in his home state of California. They are among the earliest artworks to show the fascinating, disturbing transformation of the American landscape into an unending terrain of anonymous buildings; they are also among the first photographs to seek the starkly reductive forms of Minimalist and Post-Minimalist art “out in the world.” <em>Corona del Mar</em> is nearly devoid of shadows, making the image appear as shallow as the paper on which it is printed. Baltz emphasized this congruence by mounting the photograph onto board and rimming the perimeter with India ink. The Prototype Works isolate objects in the built environment and ask to be apprehended as image-objects in their own right.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1971
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 14.8 × 21.1 cm (image/paper); 27.7 × 27.8 (mount)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Lewis Baltz

Artist

Lewis Baltz

Photography

Lewis Baltz was an American photographer known for his systematic documentation of industrial and suburban landscapes in the American West. Working primarily in black and white, his deadpan visual approach recorded factories, vacant lots, and architectural fragments with forensic precision, eschewing narrative or sentiment. His work emerged alongside conceptual art movements of the 1970s and became foundational to the New Topographics aesthetic. Baltz's practice engaged photography as a mode of social inquiry into postwar development, sprawl, and the built environment's role in shaping contemporary experience.

Newport Beach, CA, USA

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