From Galilee to the Negev

Shore, Stephen

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