Thanks, Old Owl. In the catalogue to the original New Topographics show, William Jenkins claimed that its photos were stripped of the "artistic frills" of beauty, emotion, and opinion. Of course, whether that is even possible is debatable. People find meaning in things whether one was intended or not (and of course they may be right). Maybe the New Topographers were conveying, consciously or unconsciously, the idea of the insignificance of the individua. I used to worry about that in my own photos of downtown Toronto -- I used people mainly as compositional elements but thought I might be portraying them as insignificant. Then I realized that they had made the environment they were dwarfed by, which made them suddenly powerful figures. Then I realized that their environment was to a large extent forced on them by other tiny figures who had the right connections, which made them seem like victims. Maybe all three opinions are right. But it certainly seems that New Topographics' stripping procedure is faulty.

Me, I put people in because people are interested in people. They create tension. People in red clothes create lots of tension. Of course there may be other reasons I do that that I'm entirely unaware of.