San Quentin Point, no. 3 Possibly 1982 - 1985

Lewis Baltz made this gelatin silver print, San Quentin Point, no. 3, with photography, a medium I’ve always found totally fascinating. With photography there’s the idea of pure indexicality – the image is a direct trace of reality – but of course, the choices about framing, light, and focus can make photography just as expressive as a painting. There’s a lot of grey here, and the composition’s pretty stark, with a muddy foreground giving way to some stagnant water. At first, it looks like this photograph is just documenting a neglected corner of the world. But look closer, and you see that Baltz really paid attention to the textures and forms in the landscape, from the tangled weeds to the reflections in the water. It reminds me of some of the New Topographics photographers, like Robert Adams, who were interested in the way that human activity shapes and reshapes the landscape, often in ways that are both beautiful and unsettling. Baltz’s work, like theirs, shows us that even the most seemingly neutral record of reality can be loaded with meaning and emotion.