Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist. © 2017 Stephen Shore
American photographer Stephen Shore, now 70, began his career as a child prodigy, getting his start at just 14 years old when Edward Steichen, then the director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired his work. Three years later, in 1965, he walked into Andy Warhol’s famed silver Factory and spent the next two years fully immersed and documenting the scene, thinking about how artists worked and applying those lessons to his career.
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By the age of 24, Shore had fully arrived, with his first solo photography exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ushering in a new era of photography. By this time, Shore was working in colour – which, hard to imagine now, was an extremely radical move. Using a wide array of photographic formats and mediums, he created monumental scenes from everyday life. Shore’s America is a portrait of the grandeur that lies in the most mundane of moments.
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As a result of the inscrutable nature of his work due to its level of detachment, Shore’s work has been largely misunderstood, for in his seeming objectivity he captures the enigmatic qualities of the vernacular world. Curator Quentin Bajac makes sense of it all in the new exhibition Stephen Shore, currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art through May 28, 2018.
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West 9th Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor. © 2017 Stephen Shore
U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973. 1973. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Photography Council Fund. © 2017 Stephen Shore