New Objectivity Photography vs Typology Photography
新即物主義写真 / タイポロジー写真
Both sit in Photography Movements, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
New Objectivity Photography
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Steps back from sentiment and records the structure of people and things coolly: sharp focus, frontality, typology.
Typology Photography
The Bechers' method of shooting one kind of structure under identical conditions and hanging the results in a grid. Repetition under overcast light, dead-on and without people, turns individuals into types, and by way of the Düsseldorf school it became a grammar of contemporary photography.
| New Objectivity Photography | Typology Photography | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1920s–1930s | 1959– |
| Family | Photography Movements | Photography Movements |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Sharp focus / Frontality / Repetition and types / Material detail | Grid presentation / Even overcast light / Strict frontality / Typification through repetition |
| Best used for | Photographing trades or buildings under one condition to make them comparable · Showing the detail of a product or a part precisely and without sentiment | Surveys recording one class of facility or equipment so they can be compared · Laying out a collection or product range so only the differences show |
| Type | No headlines, only the subject name and conditions in one fixed format | Lettering kept outside the frame, place and date in one format throughout |
| Composition | Frontal, level, centered, with the same background every time | An even grid with the subject held at the same size in every frame |
| Material | Deep depth of field, even overcast light, fine grained printing | Frontal shooting under flat overcast light, focal length and height fixed |
| Caution | One frame is no typology, and without matched conditions it ends as a pile of expressionless pictures. Do not trust the pose of objectivity, and read the bias that classification and viewpoint produce. | Hanging pictures made under different light and angles turns those differences into the subject, and the variation between objects disappears. |