Independent Art and Photography - Topographic images of my hometown

For my essay in this module I have been thinking about whether the new topographic style of documentary presents a truly objective look at the world, or whether the images are actually influenced by the photographers’ opinions. I’ve recently been scanning a whole load of my old negatives, many of which were shot in my hometown, Norwich. Linking these two things together, I noticed that these photographs I had taken years ago were shot in such a way as to document a town I know top to bottom, and the style was quite similar to that seen in the New Topographic exhibition. The images are black and white, shot quite simply and with low contrast. These aesthetics lend themselves to the idea that I am purely documenting the place, with no blue skies and sunshine or ominous clouds to colour the images with emotion. Finding these photographs has given me inspiration to continue with this project, which understandably ground to a halt when I moved away from the city. Now I have lived elsewhere for almost 3 years, I find myself feeling nostalgic about my hometown. However, I want to move away from other projects I have undertaken this year, and attempt to document the town with an almost detached style, to discover whether I can truly remove my emotions from the photographs, or whether they continue to shine through.
Here are some examples of the photographs that I found inspiration in:

For me, the images that work best are the ones that have no people in them, which links to the New Topographic style. However, at the time they were shot I wasn't adhering to any particular project. The images themselves are quite unremarkable, but I quite like that fact. When displayed as a group I hope the images will begin to build up a picture of the place I come from - not just the nice parts of the city, but also the more industrial areas. For this project, I think I will mainly focus in on architecture - aiming to document the buildings themselves without any distractions from human interventions. I hope to finally produce a finished project on this subject matter.