Untitled 24. New Landscapes, with essay by Mark Johnstone.

Untitled 24: New Landscapes (1981), edited by James G. Alinder and published by The Friends of Photography in Carmel, California, is an influential 56-page oblong softcover monograph that tracks a radical shift in American landscape photography at the dawn of the 1980s. Anchored by a critical introductory essay by curator and writer Mark Johnstone, the publication surveys a diverse group of contemporary photographers who broke away from traditional, pristine wilderness iconography to explore a more complex, altered, and conceptual relationship with the environment.

The Curatorial Premise: Redefining the Horizon

In his essay, Mark Johnstone contextualizes how the late-20th-century landscape had become fundamentally transformed by human intervention and shifting artistic philosophies. Moving past the heroic, untouched vistas popularized by Ansel Adams and the f/64 group, Johnstone outlines how a new generation of image-makers viewed the landscape as a layered site of social irony, historical fiction, and physical transformation. The volume structurally balances this discourse by pairing 10 vibrant four-color plates with 30 crisp black-and-white plates, accompanied by introductory commentaries for each featured artist.

Featured Artists and Visual Themes

The publication showcases a multi-faceted roster of photographers, each bringing a distinct visual vernacular to the "New Landscape":

• The Altered and Industrial Environment: Prominent documentarian Robert Adams anchors the black-and-white selections with his stark, clear-eyed focus on the encroaching New West, charting suburban development and human scale against the vast Colorado terrain. Laura Volkerding and Lynn Lown add to this topography, tracking industrial interfaces, rural structures, and the shifting geography of the American workspace.

• The Irony of Leisure: Eric Johnson contributes a conceptually sharp and ironic portfolio specifically focusing on golf courses—illustrating how modern society highly manicures, artificially shapes, and commodifies nature for recreation.

• Hand-Colored and Pictorial Transgressions: Gail Skoff challenges standard landscape representation by utilizing hand-colored silver prints, infusing natural terrains with surreal, painterly palettes that blur the line between document and subjective memory.

• The Myths and Geometries of the West: Linda Connor and Wanda Hammerback bring a more mystical, archaeological gaze to the landscape, capturing ancient rock formations and sacred geometries. Conversely, Jay Dusard approaches the terrain through an expansive, formal lens, mapping the vast, open infrastructure of the North American cattle ranching landscape.

Significance

Untitled 24: New Landscapes stands as a pivotal historical ledger from The Friends of Photography's premier series. By binding together the work of visionaries like Robert Adams and Linda Connor under Mark Johnstone’s sharp critical framework, the book serves as a vital cross-section of post-1970s landscape theory, documenting the exact moment American photography definitively traded pure romanticism for conceptual and environmental reality.