Tract House #25 1971

Lewis Baltz made "Tract House #25", probably in the 1970s, using photography, and what strikes me is the realness of it. The process here seems almost like forensic documentation, a kind of anti-art approach, but the result is so compelling. Look at the texture of the wall, that gritty surface. It's rough, not trying to be pretty, and the windows, dark and smudged, are like staring into a void. I'm drawn to the smears on the window on the left side of the photo. Are they obscuring or revealing something? Baltz reminds me of the Bechers, with their typologies of industrial structures, but Baltz is colder, more detached, it’s about cataloging, but also about something else. In the end, the art is a space for questions, not answers, right?