In 1972, Stephen Shore left New York City and set out with a friend to Amarillo, Texas. He didn't drive, so his first view of America was framed by the passenger's window frame. He was taken aback by the fact that his experience of life as a New Yorker had very little in common with the character and aspirations of Middle America. Later that year he set out again, this time on his own, with a driver's licence and a Rollei 35 - a point-and-shoot camera - to explore the country through the eyes of an everyday tourist. The project was entitled American Surfaces - referring to the superficial nature of his brief encounters with places and people and the underlying character of the images that he hoped to produce. With such an easy-to-use camera, he photographed relentlessly. 'In American Surfaces, I was photographing almost every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I peed in. But also, I was photographing streets I was driving through, buildings I would see.' Shore returned to New York triumphant, with hundreds of rolls of film spilling from his bags. In order to remain faithful to the conceptual foundations of the project, he followed the lead of most tourists of the time and sent his film to be developed and printed in Kodak's labs in New Jersey. The result was hundreds and hundreds of exquisitely composed colour pictures, whose subject became the benchmark for documenting of our fast-living, consumer-orientated world - a body of work that followed on from Walker Evans and Robert Frank's experiences of crossing America and that influenced reams of photographers such as Martin Parr and Bernd & Hilla Becher, who introduced a generation of students to Shore's work.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stephen Shore took his first photographs as a child and by the age of 14 three of his photographs were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a teenager he spent time in Andy Warhol's Factory photographing the artist and his entourage. In 1971 Shore became the first living photographer to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photographs have since been included in numerous shows, including the 'American Surfaces' exhibition (Cologne and Frankfurt, 1999) and the Tate Modern's successful 2003 'Cruel and Tender' exhibition. Shore is a pioneering and highly influential photographer; he is also an important teacher and is Director of the Photography Program at Bard College, New York.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shore enough,
This review is from: Stephen Shore: American Surfaces (Photography) (Hardcover)
After crossing the country in 1972/73 and photographing (or would snapping be more appropriate!) surfaces everywhere Shore returned to New York with hundreds of rolls of film and to continue the theme had them processed at Kodak labs into the stock 3 by 5.5 inch format color prints just like any other tourist.
The subsequent Light Gallery exhibition of the prints didn't go down too well it seems. Hardly surprising as the idea of wall mounting dozens of postcard size images of everyday houses, streets, commercial signs, motel bedrooms and their bric-a-brac (don't forget the toilets) and folks he met on the way all presented in a matter-of-fact style would hardly be considered fine art. But look through the book several times and 312 images start to come alive. Each one being the same size helps I think though there is an element of pacing in the way the book is laid out with sometimes four to a spread, others just have two or three. The flow is also dictated by placing them in historical sequence. This book has the largest number of Shore's photos from his Seventies field trips and it really needs to be considered with his Uncommon Places: The Complete Works because American Surfaces tends to merge into it. I think Uncommon has some the greatest color work taken in the last few decades and if you look through both books it becomes clear, to me, that Shore is one of the leading American photographers. Incidentally, Phaidon have published a sort of diary of Shore's travels: A Road Trip Journal complete with all the printed ephemera that one would accumulate from a journey across the Nation. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Helping us See Again...Beyond Critiques of American Consumer Fetishism,
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This review is from: Stephen Shore: American Surfaces (Photography) (Hardcover)
I loved this book, partly because I love this photographer's eye. Are the pictures documentary? Sure. Are they wry? Often, though not always. They are beautiful in the most strange, farfetched, formal aesthetic sense (shapes, colors, imaginary visual lines). That about sums it up. Stephan Shore's pictures exist on many levels simultaneously---one reason they are worth owning in book form, able to be revisited many times over a long time. Shore has a genuine gift, and he shares it with whomever takes the time to really look. This older work is relevant to contemporary production worldwide (i.e., Thomas Struth). Hopefully you will enjoy this book as much as I do.
17 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
American Surfaces, pretentious time capsule?,
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This review is from: Stephen Shore: American Surfaces (Photography) (Hardcover)
It's hard to tell how vital this visual diary is in the grand scheme of photography. It's a very personal travelogue. Shore is obsessed with himself and where he goes and what he sees. As a summary of early seventies pop culture it is fantastic. You can find out what people looked like and more importantly, what everything else looked like. I appreciate this aspect of the book, it's a reference guide to 1972. I think some of the photography is top notch but think that the book would be stronger edited down a bit. It's more interesting than the original but packs less of a punch. Could you live without it? Of course. Do you want to? No.
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