Nomadic Library

Resume

Beginning in 1965, but especially in the years between 1967 and 1971, Lewis Baltz made a body of work concentrated on the dialectic between simple, regular geometric forms found in the postwar industrial landscape, and the culture that generated such forms. Stucco walls, parking lots, the sides of warehouse sheds or disused billboards baked in the steady Californian sunlight. Baltz called his works “Prototypes,” by which he meant replicable social conventions as well as model structures of replicable manufacture. Marking Baltz’s preliminary forays into a minimal aesthetic, The Prototype Works continued his work to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild. Despite the importance of New Documents for posterity, no catalogue was produced at the time. Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand: New Documents, 1967 marks the exhibition's 50th anniversary and presents for the first time, in full-page reproductions, the 94 photographs that hung on the walls of MoMA, freshly contextualized with an abundance of archival material. Essays by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister and photographer and critic Max Kozloff, who originally reviewed the exhibition for The Nation in 1967, shed new light on the enduring significance of the exhibition and on the legacy of these three essential artists.