Stephen Shore

(American, born 1947)

Stephen Shore is a contemporary American photographer best known for his color images of street corners, plates of food, suburban baseball fields, and parking lots. These subjects are cast with a strange significance by the artist, and embody his belief that the photographic medium is in essence a record of being observant. “I discovered that this camera was the technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in a state of heightened awareness,” Shore reflected. “And it’s that awareness of really looking at the everyday world with clear and focused attention that I’m interested in.” Born on October 8, 1947 in New York, NY, Shore began photographing seriously in 1961. That same year, he sold three prints to Edward Steichen, the curator of photography at The Museum of Modern Art at the time. Shore spent his late teens and early 20s hanging out in Andy Warhol’s Factory, documenting the eccentric members of the avant-garde who passed through, in a manner similar to that of the street photographer Robert Frank. In 1971, at the age of 23, he became the first living photographer to be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the following decade, he road-tripped through America and Canada, producing a defining series of work which culminated in 1982 with his book, Uncommon Places. Since then, Shore has acted as the director of Bard College’s photography department and continued his exploration of the medium. In 2017, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) debuted a comprehensive survey exhibition of Shore, including his early black-and-white works, color prints, digital photographs, and Instagram posts. The artist currently lives and works in New York, NY. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.