Stephen Shore
The photographic career of Stephen Shore (New York,
USA, 1947) began when he was fourteen and presented his photos to
the curator of photography at the MoMA in New York, Edward
Steichen, who bought three of his works. At the age of seventeen
Shore met Andy Warhol and started documenting the Factory and
surroundings. In 1971, at the age of 24, Shore was the second
living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. In 1972 he started photographing the
American landscape during many cross country road trips. Shore's
work has been widely published and exhibited and has influenced
generations of photographers, especially because of his pioneering
use of colour and vernacular imagery.
He has had solo exhibitions at the MoMA in New York; George
Eastman House in Rochester, NY; Art Institute, Chicago and
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, among other venues. In 2007 his solo
exhibition The Biographical Landscape was presented at
the International Center of Photography in New York. In 1982 he was
appointed Director of the Photography Program at Bard College in
New York, where he has been the Susan Weber Soros Professor in the
Arts since 1996.
His work is represented in major public collections, including the
Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and MoMA, New York; Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston; SF MOMA, San Francisco; Los Angeles County
Museum of Art and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover.
Shore published various groundbreaking photobooks and some of
them have been reprinted in revised editions, such as
American Surfaces, Uncommon
Places and The Nature of Photographs. A
comprehensive monograph will be published by Phaidon in February
2008.
In 2006 Stephen Shore was the first guest editor of a biannual
series called Witness, published in the US by the
non-profit organisation Joy of Giving Something and Nazraeli Press.
In this issue, Shore talks at length about his fascination for new
technological developments such as iPhoto books and
printing-on-demand, and the effect these have on his own work.
Stephen Shore is represented by 303 Gallery in New York.