"Systems Everywhere" NEW TOPOGRAHICS AND ART OF THE 1970S, Greg Foster-Rice / An Archival Impulse, Hal Foster

In Foster-Rice's essay the main discussion revolves around the New Topographics exhibition. Attention is placed on a few of the critics or commentators about the exhibition that used words about the work that would allude to its connection to minimalism. However, many practitioners and critics who dealt with non-photographic mediums argued that Minimalism, as a majorly sculptural movement would not place even the most minimal 2 dimensional paintings within. Regardless of this disagreement, Foster-Rice recognizes the two movements have similarities with their "structural and strategic characteristics that reflect a broad shift in contemporary artistic practices". This shift is from the idea of the art as object to this idea as the art being a system. The transformation was envisioned in the hopes that art would have a new relationship to the social. Bringing the real world experience back into what informed art.

"Systems Everywhere"- 1960-70's artist began to respond to the complexities of the time. Work began to take shape in the response to American affluence post WWII and the Cold War as the city grew less crowded and the sub-urban landscape exploded. "an experience of the human altered landscape as a system determined by issues of construction, habitation, and abandonment within the natural landscape".

"Toward a Systems Aesthetic"- Foster-Rice explains that the negative change in societies use of the land becomes a heavy influence in the work of the New Topographics photographers. The use of pictorialist landscape photographs in the late 1800's early 1900's were a way of placing the humans hand gently on the landscape. Train tracks gently followed curves of glorious mountains and pristine streams. The New Topographics, as if shifting 45 degrees in perspective, show the interaction of man and landscape as opposing forces that are colliding rather than strolling side by side. Foster-Rice continues with a concept that applies this shift from the pictorialist representation of landscape as a way of placing the viewer back into the environment of which is being viewed in the photograph. "Rather than separate art from experience, their work sought to see art as an analogue for experience, in which photography played a central role".

Photography as a System-Foster-Rice summarizes John Szarkowhi, "that fine-art photographs should be thought of as pictures that summarize moments in time but considered distinct from the actual experience and social significance of that time."

Procedural Method- The procedural aspect to the New Topographic photographers was a method that was in response to traditional and formal aspects that previously defined fine-art photography. The procedural is to make an image that is not based on an aesthetic response. It was to recognize variables and then keep them constant.