The deadpan style is often considered only to be reserved for the portraiture genre. However, it is widely associated within landscape images. The style rose in popularity in the later part of the 20th century, particularly after the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. The Düsseldorf School of Photography, led by the Becher’s (who exhibited in the Topographic exhibition) carved a path for the likes of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth. “Gursky often places us so far away from his subjects that we are not part of the action at all but detached critical viewers.” (p.84).
Often this style of landscape photography offers such a grand detail of the scene. The overcast weather and the high vantage point gives the viewer a God like pressence to view the image. “Deadpan photography may be specific in its description of its subject, but its seeming neutrality and totality of vision is of epic proportions” (p.81)
Steven Butter MA 