Stephen Shore's work has been widely published and exhibited for the past forty-five years. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, forty years earlier. He has also had one-man shows at George Eastman House, Rochester; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art opened a major retrospective spanning Stephen Shore's entire career. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked new interest in color photography and in the use of the view camera for documentary work.

More than 25 books have been published of Stephen Shore's photographs including Uncommon Places: The Complete Works; American Surfaces; Stephen Shore, a retrospective monograph in Phaidon's Contemporary Artists series; Stephen Shore: Survey and most recently, Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971-1979 and Stephen Shore: Elements. In 2017, the Museum of Modern Art published Stephen Shore in conjunction with their retrospective of his photographic career.

Stephen also wrote The Nature of Photographs, published by Phaidon Press, which addresses how a photograph functions visually. His work is represented by 303 Gallery, New York; and Sprüth Magers, London and Berlin. Since 1982 he has been the director of the Photography Program at Bard College, NY, where he is the Susan Weber Professor in the Arts.

His new book, Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography. A Memoir, was published by Mack Books in 2021.
 

On episode 192, Stephen discusses, among other things:

• How the new book came about
• How it differs from previous book, The Nature of Photographs.
• Artist’s superstition over discussing the creative process
• The importance of experimentation
• Showing and not explaining
• Photography as a ‘generous medium’
• Creating the book as an ‘experience’
• Structure vs. composition
• Inclusion vs. exclusion
• Mastering the discipline - 3 phases
• Does he believe in The Muse?
• Being attentive in the midst of life
• Working with a performance coach
• The influence of paintings… and Walker Evans
• The nature (and importance) of ambition
• Getting a solo show at The Met, aged 23
• Sustaining drive
• His interest in drone photography… and Instagram
• The day he realised the 8x10 camera was for him

Referenced:

• The Nature of Photographs
• Lee Friedlander
• Garry Winogrand
• Bruno Bettelheim
• Richard Avedon
• Jerry Goldsmith
• Gregory Crewdson
• George Eliot
• Walker Evans

Website | Instagram | Interview with David Campany

“To look at something completely ordinary, what you see day to day in your life, and pay attention to it, that’s what interests me. And just from years of trying it and doing it, I feel like it provides a certain kind of food for people, that it’s nourishing.”

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