Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is an American photographer known for his images of scenes and objects of the banal, and for his pioneering use of
color in art photography.[1] His books include Uncommon Places (1982) and American Surfaces (1999), photographs that he took on cross-country road trips in the 1970s.[1]
Shore was born as sole son of Jewish parents who ran a handbag company.[8] He was interested in photography from an early age. Self-taught, he received a Kodak Junior darkroom set for his sixth birthday from a forward-thinking uncle.[4][9] He began to use a 35 mm camera three years later and made his first color photographs. At ten he got a copy of
Walker Evans's book, American Photographs, which influenced him greatly.[4] At age fourteen, Shore naively contacted
Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, if he would have a look at his photographs, and Steichen was kind enough to buy three black and white photographs of New York City.[4][6][10]
In 1965, at the age of sixteen, Shore began to frequent
Andy Warhol's studio,
the Factory, photographing Warhol and the people that surrounded him, on and off, for about three years. "I began to see
conceptually there because that's how Andy looked at the world, finding this detached pleasure in the banality of everyday things."[4] His photographs of the Factory alongside those of
Billy NameKasper König selected for a documentary exhibition on Warhol at the
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 1968.
Through
John Coplans'Jawlensky and the Serial Image[11] and by spending time at the
John Gibson Gallery he got acquainted with conceptual works that used photography by
Christo,
Richard Long,
Peter Hutchinson and
Dennis Oppenheim.
His early conceptual sequences of black and white photographs originated in 1969 and 1970. They were shown at his first solo exhibition in1971 at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, making him the first living photographer to be exhibited there.[12][4]
American Surfaces
Shore then embarked on a series of cross-country
road trips, making "on the road" photographs of American and Canadian landscapes. In 1972, he made the journey from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, that provoked his interest in color photography. Viewing the streets and towns he passed through, he conceived the idea to photograph them in color, first using 35 mm hand-held camera and then a 4×5"
view camera before finally settling on the
8×10 format.[6][13] The change to a large format camera is believed to have happened because of a conversation with
John Szarkowski.[13] In 1974 a
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant funded further work,[14] followed in 1975 by a
Guggenheim Fellowship.[2]
Shore has been the director of the photography department at
Bard College since 1982.[20][1]
His American Surfaces series, a travel diary made between 1972 and 1973 with photographs of "friends he met, meals he ate, toilets he sat on", was not published until 1999, then again in 2005.[4][6]
1972: Light Gallery, New York City. The first exhibition of his American Surfaces photographs.[1] Further solo shows in 1973, 1975 (stereo photographs), 1977, 1978 and 1980.
2009–2012: New Topographics, George Eastman House, Rochester, and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson. Further stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Linz (Austria), Cologne (Germany), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and Bilbao (Spain)
Publications
Photo books, monographs and solo exhibition catalogues
The Gardens at Giverny: A View of Monet's World. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1983 (repr. 2005). ISBN 0-89381-113-0.
Luzzara. Museo Nazionale delle Arti Naives "Cesare Zavattini" di Luzzara. Rubiera (Reggio Emilia): Arcadia Ed., 1993.
OCLC637820760. "Companion volume" to
Paul Strand's Un Paese from 1953.
Fotografien 1973 bis 1993. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1994. ISBN 3-925047-32-8 (German). Catalogue accompanying the first retrospective exhibition which travelled through Germany, edited by Heinz Liesbrock, texts by Liesbrock,
James Enyeart and Thomas Weski, and a conversation by Liesbrock with
Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Photographs 1973–1993. Munich: Schirmer Art Books, 1998.
ISBN3-88814-647-X. English edition for the George Eastman House, Rochester, the only venue outside Germany.
The Velvet Years. Andy Warhol's Factory, 1965–67. New York: Thunder's Mouth, and London: Pavilion, 1995.
ISBN1-85793-323-0. Text by Lynne Tyllman.
American Surfaces 1972. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 1999.
ISBN3-88814-423-X. Edited by Shore, sequence of 77 photographs.
Uncommon Places: 50 Unpublished Photographs. Düsseldorf: Galerie Conrads, and Paris: Ed. Mennour, 2002.
ISBN3-928224-06-9. Text by
Gerry Badger and Shore.
Uncommon Places: The Complete Works. New York: Aperture, and London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
ISBN978-1-59711-303-8. Updated 2nd printing in 2015 with 20 additional photographs and statement.
American Surfaces. London:
Phaidon, 2005 (reprinted 2008, 2011, 2013).
ISBN978-0-714848-63-1. Edition with 312 photographs, an introduction by Bob Nickas and captions.
New revised and expanded edition: 2020. ISBN 978-1-83866-137-3.
Emirati Expressions. Abu Dhabi: Tourism & Culture Authority, 2011. ISBN 9948-16-293-5. Result of four months of workshops in 2009. Exhibtion catalogue a. o. with a portfolio of 50 images taken by Shore in Abu Dhabi.[29]
Mose: A Preliminary Report. Cologne: Walther König, 2011.
ISBN978-3-86560-394-4. Edited by Antonello Frongia and William Guerrieri.
The Book of Books. London: Phaidon 2012. ISBN 978-0-7148-6086-2. Massive two-volume set in slipcase containing all 83 of Shore’s
print-on-demand books made between 2003 and 2008. Limited edition of 250 signed copies. Essay by Jeff Rosenheim.
The Hudson Valley. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Blind Spot Series, 2012.
ISBN0-615-49176-6. Limited edition of 1000, edited by Dana Faconti, text by Laurie Dahlberg.
One Picture Book #73: Pet Pictures. Portland, OR: Nazraeli Press, 2012.
ISBN1-59005-356-7.
Winslow Arizona. Tokyo: Amana, 2014.
ISBN978-4-907519-07-0 (English and Japanese). Series of pictures taken on a single day as part of
Doug Aitken's Station to Station project.[30]
Stephen Shore: Survey. Madrid: Fundación
Mapfre, and New York: Aperture, 2014.
ISBN978-1-59711-309-0. Catalogue accompanying the first comprehensive retrospective, with an interview between
David Campany and Shore, and texts by Marta Dahó,
Sandra S. Phillips and Horacio Fernández.
Instagram. London: Mörel, 2015. ISBN 978-1-907071-49-2. All images posted by Shore on
Instagram up to this point, edited by
Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Limited edition of 200.
with
Tina Barney: The Noguchi Museum: A Portrait. London: Phaidon, 2015. ISBN 978-0-7148-7028-1.
Factory: Andy Warhol. London: Phaidon, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7148-7274-2. Text by Lynne Tyllman.
Luzzara, 1993. London: Stanley/Barker, 2016.
ISBN978-0-9569922-8-4. New and expanded edition.
Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1973–1981. New York: Aperture, 2017.
ISBN978-1-59711-388-5.
Stereograph. New York: Aperture, 2018. ISBN 978-1-68395-106-3. Thirty
stereoscopic slides in viewer. Photographs made in 1974 with a
Stereo Realist.[31]
VOL. LXIX – Los Angeles, CA, February 4, 1969. New York: Roman Nvmerals, 2018.
OCLC1084978348.[32]
Elements. New York:
Eakins Press Foundation, 2019. ISBN 978-0-87130-080-5.
Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971–1979. London:
Mack, 2020.
ISBN978-1-912339-70-9.[33][34] Afterword by Britt Salvesen, "Ordinary Speech: The Vernacular in Stephen Shore's Early 35mm Photography".
Topographies: Aerial Surveys of the American Landscape . London: Mack, 2023. ISBN 978-1-913620-89-9.
Aerial photographs shot by
drone since 2020. Essays by Noah Chasin and
Richard B. Woodward.
Witness Number One. New York: Joy of Giving Something, 2006. ISBN 1-59005-188-2. Edited by Shore, conversation with Jeff Rosenheim, essay by
Martin Parr: "11 Interesting Photography Books about Which Little Is Known," additional photographs by Shore's students
Shannon Ebner, Jamie O'Shea and Laura Gail Tyler.
"Form and Pressure". In: Aperture 205, winter 2011.
Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography. A Memoir. London: Mack, 2022.
ISBN978-1-913620-53-0.[36]
Literature
Max Kozloff: "Photography: The Coming of Age of Color." In:
Artforum, January 1975. Reprinted in Max Kozloff: Photography & Fascination. Danbury, NH: Addison House 1979. ISBN 0-89169-020-4. Pp. 183–196, here 192–195.
American Independents: Eighteen Color Photographers. New York: Abbeville, 1987.
ISBN0-89659-666-4.
Martin Parr, Gerry Badger: The Photobook: A History, Volume II. London: Phaidon 2006. ISBN 978-0-7148-4433-6. Uncommon Places, p. 35, American Surfaces, 294f.
Volume III. London: Phaidon 2014. ISBN 978-0-7148-6677-2. A Road Trip Journal, p. 303.
Britt Salvesen, Alison Nordström: New Topographics. CCP, Tucson, George Eastman House, Rochester. Göttingen: Steidl 2009. ISBN 3-86521-827-X.
Kevin Moore: Starburst. Color Photography in America 1970–1980. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2010. ISBN 978-3-7757-2490-6. Catalogue accompanying the exhibition at
Cincinnati Art Museum.
^"Ways of Making Pictures. Interview with David Campany." In: Mapfre 2014, p. 24.
^John Coplans,
Shirley Hopps: Jawlensky and the Serial Image. Exhibition catalogue. Irvine and Riverside: University of California, 1966.
OCLC1012097958.
^"Ways of Making Pictures." Interview with David Campany. In: Mapfre 2014, p. 25ff; ill. on p. 70ff.
^Frankel, David (December 2014). "Stephen Shore,
303 Gallery." Artforum. Vol. 53, no. 4. p. 304. Retrieved via ProQuest database, 17 February 2018. "With William Eggleston, Joel Sternfeld, and others, Stephen Shore was one of those who established color photography as an important aesthetic medium in the 1970s."
^O'Neill, Claire (February 24, 2010). "
The Crusade For Color Photography". The Picture Show (photo stories from NPR).
NPR. npr.org. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
^Catalogue: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. Edited by William Jenkins. Rochester, NY: International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, 1975.