Ryan and I engage in a conversation around our collaborative project, ‘Tracy Hills,‘ an in-depth exploration of nearly three years the eponymous new master-planned community in the Central Valley near San Francisco. With the 50th anniversary of The New West drawing near, we reflect on the New Topographics legacy and reconsider the topics and issues
Robert Adams made a profound statement when he called his book “The New West”, as it marked a pivotal moment of change. I assume he longed for simpler times and a return to a time before the land became sprawling with freeways, billboards, tract homes and strip malls. Adams witnessed the birth of the suburbs. Today, these areas he photographed are no longer recognizable as the suburbs, as they have been fully incorporated into the metropolitan city. I was not born when Adams documented the New West, so the images Adams portrayed don’t necessarily convey much urgency or concern to me, but rather a sense of nostalgia of my childhood town.
