Stephen Shore: Survey (Aperture, 2014)
By Robert Burke Warren
If you want to know what chutzpah looks like, you should be at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck this Sunday. Acclaimed photographer and longtime Bard faculty member Stephen Shore, celebrating the publication of photo book
Stephen Shore: Survey, will talk about his remarkable career, give a presentation, conduct a Q & A and sign books.
His story begins with an audacity only a teenager could pull off. In 1962, at the age of 14, after teaching himself to shoot a 35 mm camera and develop film, he cold-called Edward Steichen, the curator of the Museum of Modern Art, and asked for an appointment. Amazingly, he got one. Still more astounding: Steichen purchased three of the bold teen’s photographs. The next year, MOMA purchased a couple more. With that as his entrée to the art world, he became the boy photographer of Andy Warhol’s factory, assisting on Warhol’s films, documenting the seismic scene, and capturing in gorgeous black and white the highly influential rock band The Velvet Underground. In 1971, at just 24, he enjoyed the honor of being the second living artist to have a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Over the ensuing years, Shore has made good on that initial promise, creating a vast body of distinctive photographic work in both black and white and color, receiving numerous grants, and showing solo from Manhattan to Rome to Vienna to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and beyond, influencing two generations of photographers along the way. He is renowned for elevating otherwise “mundane" subjects to a level of fascination and artistic beauty, and for pioneering the use of color film. Prior to Shore’s groundbreaking early 70s work "American Surfaces," many had thought color was suited only to advertising. Shore knew better. He captured the charged atmosphere of ordinary moments, and presented his vision in defiantly exuberant hues. Countless acolytes followed suit.
Stephen Shore, July 22nd, 1969, from Stephen
Shore: Survey (Aperture, 2014) © Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Stephen Shore: A Survey is a 250-image companion to the first museum retrospective of Shore’s work, currently showing at Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid. (Aperture and Fundación MAPFRE published the book.) At Oblong, Shore will give what he calls a 30-minute PowerPoint “preface" to the Q & A session. This must-see presentation will cover his history as well as a selection of the work in the book, which ranges from 1960, when he was 12, through conceptual work in the late 60s and early 70s, to recent work heretofore unpublished. “It’s not going to cover my whole life," he says, laughing. “I’ve only got 30 minutes."
Indeed, Shore’s life and career have been deep, varied and rich, and
Survey reflects it all, with panoramas of New York alongside landscapes of the Arizona desert, Walker Evans-inspired portraits of humble country folk, archeological photos, and tableaux of our own Hudson Valley, to name but a few subjects. (Shore, who has directed Bard’s photography program since 1982, lives in Tivoli.)
Although the book and show are a retrospective culled from over a half-century of work, Shore isn’t slowing down. Declining to choose a particular subject that stands out from his impressively broad oeuvre, he says, “Artists always like to talk about what they’re working on at the moment. I’ve been shooting in Ukraine, and it is the most moving place I’ve ever been. The land is resonant with emotion; the people, the buildings, everything."
In other words, more stunning photos to come, in which Stephen Shore will bring to life sights not yet seen, and seen through his own distinctive lens.
Stephen Shore, Photographer
Presentation, Q & A, and Book Signing
Sunday, December 7, 2014 at 6 p.m.
Oblong Books & Music
6422 Montgomery St., Rhinebeck
(845) 876-0500
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