Lewis Baltz

He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Baltz's work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Lewis Baltz studied at Claremont Graduate University and San Francisco Art Institute. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is architectural photography. Employment is recorded with European Graduate School. Work by Lewis Baltz is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Finnish National Gallery, Tate Modern and National Gallery of Canada. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Lewis Baltz • Born — 12 September 1945 • Birthplace — Newport Beach, California, U.S. • Died — 22 November 2014 • Place of death — Paris, France • Known for — New Topography • Education — San Francisco Art Institute Claremont Graduate School • Occupation — Visual artist, photographer, educator

Lewis Baltz was born on September 12, 1945, in Newport Beach, California. His father died when he was age 11. Baltz attended Monterey Peninsula College in 1967. He later graduated with a BFA degree in fine arts from San Francisco Art Institute in 1969; and held a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University).

His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz's images describe the architecture of the human landscape: offices, factories and parking lots. His pictures are the reflection of control, power, and influenced by and over human beings. His minimalistic photographs in the trilogy Ronde de Nuit, Docile Bodies, and Politics of Bacteria, picture the void of the other. In 1974 he captured the anonymity and the relationships between inhabitation, settlement and anonymity in The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California. His books and exhibitions, his "topographic work", such as The New Industrial Parks, Nevada, San Quentin Point, Candlestick Point, expose the crisis of technology and define both objectivity and the role of the artist in photographs. His work Candlestick Point is made of 84 photographs documenting a public space near Candlestick Park, ruined by natural detritus and human intervention. Baltz moved to Europe in the late 1980s and started to use large colored prints. He published several books of his work including Geschichten von Verlangen und Macht, with Slavica Perkovic (Scalo, 1986). Other photographic series, including Sites of Technology (1989–92), depict the clinical, pristine interiors of hi-tech industries and government research centres, principally in France and Japan. In 1995, the story Deaths in Newport was produced as a book and CD-ROM. Baltz also produced a number of video works. Baltz taught at various institutions, including Claremont Graduate School, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), California State University, San Bernardino, and the IUAV University in Venice, Italy, where in 2006 he co-founded the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation.

In 2002, Baltz became a professor for photography at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He lived his last years between Paris and Venice. Baltz died on November 22, 2014, in Paris at the age of 69 following a long illness.

Baltz's work is held in the following permanent collections: • Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum • Metropolitan Museum of Art • Tate Modern • Los Angeles County Museum of Art • Whitney Museum of American Art • Art Institute of Chicago • Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego • Philadelphia Museum of Art • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art • National Gallery of Art