photostream

I chose Stephen Shore from the American Photo magazine list. A name that I had never come across – or if I had, a name that I hadn’t registered. As is often the case with these things I immediately became sensitised to the name and noticed it in several different places – for example a shortlist for a major photographic prize, an advert for a touring exhibition and a book review in the British Journal of Photography.

American Photo said that “along with Joel Sternfeld, Shore is credited with taking color (photography) beyond the spheres of advertising and fashion and into the realm of art in the early 1970’s with his large format images of the American vernacular landscape”. This translates, on countless web references, as ‘Shore invented colour art photography’. Shore was also the first living photographer to have a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This seemed like a photographer worth investigating.

A quick book search brought forward a number of recent publications, including ‘American Surfaces’ in October 2005 (about which BJP said that it was “a nostalgic look at the early career of one of the most influential photographers of his generation”). However, the recent books are reprints of earlier works, and although apparently expanded, not new work.

I haven’t seen ‘American Surfaces’ but I have seen another recent reprint, ‘Uncommon Places’, and the early eighties book ‘The Gardens at Giverny’, which also appears to have been reprinted about five years ago.

On the web there are a few photos appearing on general websites usually in small size low resolution format (and possibly of dubious copyright status) and significant collections at a couple of galleries where Shore’s work is sold. There is the 303 Gallery in New York, which doesn’t give a particularly good browsing experience, and www.billcharles.com, which has a larger selection and includes work – mostly commercial – more recent than the books.

Shore works as an academic and is the Chairman of the Arts Division of a college in the US. His published work includes a very successful book of writing called ‘The Nature of Photographs’ which I’ve reviewed recently.

To my mind, at least, this rather more ominous sentence appeared in the American Photo write up: “In his eye for the ordinary, he was ahead of his time, and as a consequence, Shore’s star is shining as brightly as ever.” I’ll come back to this later.

In summary then, Shore was/is a large format photographer working in colour at a time when art photographers didn’t. He chose as his subject matter relatively mundane places and topics. He has been widely copied and is still active commercially.

How do the photos look?

The most striking photographic thing that I felt when I first looked at them was that, indeed, these were large format colour pictures and that is unusual. There is a static look to most of them which is so much at odds with recent colour pictures (see most photoblogs). Add to this a low level of colour saturation (i.e. the colours are quite lifelike) and you have a distinctive body of work.

I find the recent commercial work difficult to analyse. Large ad campaigns are collaborative efforts. Further, even consciously arty ones, like the Orange series on the Bill Charles site, aren’t primarily artistic in intent. Adding a little artistic sparkle to a commercial venture maybe a great skill, but the results may not say a lot about the vision of the artist.

The ‘Giverny’ pictures stand out from the rest of the photographs that I have seen because they are more conventional and they are not in, or of, the US. Shore seems to have unrivalled access to Monet’s gardens during and after the restoration in the late 1970’s, yet the photos, whilst they would be pleasing in a souvenir book, seem to fall well short of the eulogistic words in the accompanying essays.

The main body of work is what gives rise to that quote about “an eye for the ordinary”. The one recent artwork book that I have found reference to, ‘Essex County’, being monochrome pictures of tree trunks and fallen leaves, is of a very different subject matter to the wide streets of 1970’s urban America, yet maintains the same ordinariness. The, albeit mediocre, reproductions of “Essex County” I have seen suggests the word ‘ordinary’ in all its meanings.

In the earlier work I see different things depending on my mood. If I am in a hurry or am distracted at all, then I see bland photos, both in colour palette and subject, which I pass over quickly in the search, 21st century style, for something a little attention grabbing. In a more contemplative mood there are pictures in the collection that can hold my attention for substantial periods as I explore their nuances and details. I find this interesting, especially as I often enter a gallery or museum in a bit of a hurry or whilst trying to fit too much into a rare visit to a large city. Perhaps the photobloggers have it right. Better to be famous for a 1/15th of a second than be hung in a gallery.

No matter how ground breaking art is at the time it is produced I think it is a significant test to see how it fares over time. This can lead to mistakes as artists go out of fashion or are forgotten in the welter of the new, but there are two different questions – ‘was this interesting at the time?’ and ‘is this interesting now?’. It is this second question which concerns me here. A photograph is no longer special simply because it is in colour. A street scene is no longer special because it is highly detailed (taken with a large format camera).

Reading what Shore has to say about his work is illuminating – more illuminating than reading the words of his commentators or interviewers. Shore, it seems, was more interested in the process of producing the pictures and the related (probably best described as “social” or “anthropological”) projects that he was undertaking. His words make it clear that certain series are about time, or space, or the behaviour of other human beings, and not about the resulting images. It was probably these projects which led to the clarity of thought which became ‘the nature of photographs’.

Nonetheless, Shore is a very visually educated photographer who has taken a lot of images (even if the word ‘lot’ is qualified by his use of a slow to use 8×10 camera). One would expect a certain number to stand in their own right and this is the case.

Discounting any historical interest (many of these photo are to 1970’s America what the early Victorian photographers were to urban Britain), and passing over those which might have been interesting when new but have since been bettered, there remains a small number of intriguing, languid, and very structured, urban landscapes that are worth searching out.

Next month: Tom Mangelsen

Some related posts chosen by the software:

• Stephen Shore: witness – a review
• Talking about pictures (Stephen Shore)
• Stephen Shore – The Nature of Photographs