Stephen Shore
American, 1947
Shore’s photographs are attentive to ordinary scenes of daily experience, yet through color and composition Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditation. A restaurant meal on a road trip, a billboard off a highway and a dusty side street in a Texas town are all seemingly banal images, but upon reflection subtly imply meaning. Color photography attracted Shore for its ability to record the range and intensity of hues seen in life.
In 1971, at the age of 24, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His 1982 book, Uncommon Places, became a bible for young photographers seeking to work in color because, along with that of William Eggleston, his work exemplified the fact that the medium could be considered art.
His work has been exhibited and collected by such venues as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Shore has participated in exhibitions at the Aperture Foundation and the International Center of Photography in New York City, Gijon Museum in Spain, Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. He currently lives and works in New York.
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To see something spectacular and recognize it as a photographic possibility is not making a very big leap. But to see something ordinary, something you’d see every day, and recognize it as a photographic possibility — that is what I am interested in.”
© Alec Soth
