You can almost taste the dust in Stephen Shore's photographs of rural America. He captures the discrete comeliness of nondescript townscapes with all the exuberance of a native New Yorker discovering his motherland. In 1972, Shore hit the road in a rental car, leaving behind the buzz of New York City to explore the humdrum towns and suburbs of North America en route to Amarillo, Texas. The pictures he took along the way culminated in 'American Surfaces', an exhibition at Light Gallery that same year, featuring deadpan color snapshots of sock-clad ankles, barren refrigerators, a drinking fountain, an unsanitary toilet, a kitten in the grass, a sandwich sliced in fours, the facades of "S & M" drugstore and the "Assembly of God" church, all printed in the standard size you would expect to get at a Fotomat kiosk and hung on the gallery walls in a matrix pattern. The matter-of-fact style pioneered by Shore is so common nowadays that it is easy to take for granted that he was blazing a trail in the early seventies, when color photography itself was still rare in the art world. (Though some credit of influence is likely due to the Factory, where, in the 1960s, Shore had spent time photographing the regulars. Andy Warhol's fondness for ordinary Americana and Jonas Mekas's compulsion for archiving must certainly have rubbed off on the young photographer.)
During his initial tour of the continent, Shore had found what would become his muse for the remainder of the decade--the visually complex mundanity of parking lots, gas stations, discount motels and greasy diners. Such is the flavor of his retrospective 'Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969-79' at the International Center of Photography in New York.
The exhibition is, as Shore calls it, a "director's cut" of his 1982 photo book 'Uncommon Places', which picked up where 'American Surfaces' left off, with elaborate visions of his travels between 1973 and 1981. For the 'Uncommon Places' series, Shore used a very anti-snapshot view camera and eight-by-ten film. It's comical to image the lanky photographer in some backwater town, wresting the cumbersome view camera onto a tripod, then ducking his head under a dark cloth to trap the ideal image onto the large negative. But the pictures it creates are crystalline; everything in the compositions is keenly focused, from the nearest brick to the farthest tree leaf.
Stephen Shore, 'West Ninth Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974'
'Biographical Landscapes' brings back several classic pieces from 'Uncommon Places'. There is the small cluster of moviegoers waiting outside a theater under a dusk moon in Second Street, Ashland, Wisconsin, July 9, 1973 (even Shore's titles are deadpan: place, city, state, date); the ironic daylight shot of a drive-in movie facade that reads "Sunset" in West Ninth Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, September 27, 1974; the perfectly composed picture of moms and kids dawdling on a sandy river embankment, with El Capitan looming in the hazy distance (a nod to and a rebuke of Ansel Adams's sentimental landscapes), in Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979. And the photos in the show have been digitally reprinted and enlarged, giving them an enhanced monumentality but with all the pastel richness of the original prints.
Stephen Shore, 'Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979'
Just as striking as Shore's famous landscapes are the many interior scenes that were sadly left out of the original 'Uncommon Places'. These shots give a fuller, more human view of his journeys. We see the mundane settings of motel rooms he slept in, with blasé bedspreads, yellow curtains, ashtrays, television sets, and, in one shot, Shore's feet in white sneakers propped up on the bed. And we see the meals he ate: buttery pancakes, a half cantaloupe and a glass of milk in Trail's End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973; a partially eaten McDonald's hamburger in a Styrofoam container, small fries and a cup of milk in Perrine, Florida, November 11, 1977. These still lifes tell a story that is both specific to Shore's experiences and pertinent to the everyman in their ordinariness.
Stephen Shore, 'Trail's End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973'
When it comes to portraiture, however, Shore's compositions can be stilted. Take, for instance, the frontal portrait of his wife in Ginger Shore, Miami, Florida, November 12, 1977. She stands before a brown tile wall with luggage saddled around her shoulders, looking distractedly away from the camera. There is no depth--physically nor emotionally--to the composition, just preoccupied Ginger and the flat brown tiles. But when Shore combines portraiture and landscape the results are delightful. Another image of Ginger, called Ginger Shore, Causeway Inn, Tampa, Florida, November 17, 1977, exemplifies the photographer's affection for odd angles and maximal visual depth. There are metal rails in the foreground, which follow some stairs into a turquoise swimming pool where Ginger Shore stands (with her back to us) on the bottom step, looking past the poolside chairs toward the bay and the jetty in the background. The picture is Hockneyesque, of course, because of the pool, and it also foreshadows Ryan McGinley's strangely angled snapshots of friends cavorting in the water. But the clear, insistent sunlight, the beguilingly boring locale and multiple layers of points of interest are signature Shore motifs.
During his years on the road, Shore was constantly seeking that moment when perfect light and imperfect landscapes would collide harmoniously, when "for a few minutes the place would be transformed."
Trent Morse
Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969-79
Until 9 September
ICP
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
T: +1: 212 857 0000
Trent Morse is an arts journalist and a medical writer based in New York. He has an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, where he produced a collection of stories about artists who use celebrity subject matter in their work.
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