Stephen Shore is an American photographer, mainly known for his color work. He is famous for both anecdotal elements and important contributions.
Aged 14, he is already a photographer and manages to meet Edward Steichen, then DIrector of Photography at the MoMA, New York, and the legend buys 3 prints from him. A few years later, from 1965 to 1965, he documents life at Andy Warhol's Factory as he is barely 18. Then in 1971, at the age of 24, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York offers him a solo exhibition!
It is in 1972 that he will switch from B&W to color photography, at about the same time as his contemporary William Eggleston. His photographs speak of day to day America, may it be nature, the city or the "suburbia"; but he also photographs the trivial or insignificant things of daily life, may it be motel interiors, a phone booth or a meal on a table...
Stephen Shore is also famous for his photobooks, most importantly "Uncommon Places" (Aperture, 1982) and "American Surfaces" (Schirmer/Mosel, 1999) and also the theory book "The Nature of Photographs" (John Hopkins University Press, 1998 / Phaidon, 2007). More recently, he published with Mack "Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971-1979" (2020), and "Steel Town" (2021).
© Portrait by Raphaël Labbé
Steel Town (*signed / not signed*)
Presentation by Mack: " In 1977, Stephen Shore travelled across New York state, Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio – an area in the midst of industrial decline that would eventually be known as the Rust Belt. Shore met steelworkers who had been thrown out of work by plant closures and photographed their suddenly fragile world: deserted factories, lonely bars,...
Transparencies: Small Camera Works...
Presentation by Mack: " Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971-1979 offers an alternative account of one of the most fabled episodes in photographic history: the cross-country journeys that produced Stephen Shore’s luminous new vision of the American landscape, Uncommon Places. Along with his large-format camera, Shore also brought a 35mm Leica on his...
Presentation by Eakins Press Foundation: " Stephen Shore: Elements is inspired by the Eakins Press Foundation's celebrated (and first) publication, Message from the Interior by Walker Evans (1966), the large scale volume of Evans' images from a broad range of his splendid career. Like the Evans book, Shore's pictures have been carefully chosen to...
Publisher's presentation : "Survey book, accompanying the MAPFRE Foundation traveling exhibition, and offering the most complete view to date of Stephen Shore's work." Publisher's longer presentation in French : "Cet ouvrage rétrospectif, accompagnant l’exposition itinérante de la Fondation Mapfre, offre la vision la plus complète à ce jour de l’oeuvre de...
Publisher's presentation: "Stephen Shore is a pioneering photographer and influential teacher. From Galilee to the Negev is an intimate portrait of a multi-faceted place, exploring the landscape of Israel and the West Bank; its complexities and its contradictions. Shore travelled the length and breadth of the region, questioning and revealing through his...