Uncommon Places : The Complete Works Stephen Shore

Originally published by Aperture in 1982, Stephen Shore's legendary Uncommon Places has influenced a generation of photographers. Among the first artists to take color beyond advertising and fashion photography, Shore's large-format color work on the American vernacular landscape stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition. Amazon The series grew out of road trips Shore took across North America. Shore followed up his first volume of photographs, American Surfaces, with an even more expansive and in-depth exploration of the North American way of life. He traveled much more extensively during the period of 1973 to 1979, from which these images are culled. The major shift in this body of work was technical as well as conceptual: Shore had moved into large-format imagery at this point, hauling around an 8x10 view camera on his journey. GoodreadsGoodreads What sets the photographs apart is their cool, deliberate quality. Approaching his subjects with cool objectivity, Shore retains precise internal systems of gestures in composition and light, through which a parking lot emptied of people, a hotel bedroom, or a building on a side street assumes both an archetypal aura and an ambiguously personal importance. Like Robert Frank and Walker Evans before him, Shore discovered a hitherto unarticulated vision of America via highway and camera. The subjects are deliberately ordinary: streets, storefronts, parked cars, diners, motel rooms, and the occasional portrait, shot across Florida, Texas, Canada, and the American West. AbeBooksAbeBooks The "Complete Works" treatment is what distinguishes this volume from the slim original. Published by Aperture in 2005, it presented a definitive collection of the landmark series. Beyond Shore's signature landscapes, this expanded survey reveals equally remarkable collections of interiors and portraits. Editions vary somewhat: the Aperture edition added previously unpublished work along with an essay by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen and a conversation between Shore and novelist-critic Lynne Tillman, while later reissues (Thames & Hudson) added nearly 20 further rediscovered images plus a statement from Shore on what it means to expand a classic series. ApertureAbeBooks It's widely regarded as essential — on any list of must-own photo books, Shore's 1982 classic deserves pride of place — and it remains a foundational reference point for New Color and large-format documentary photography, having directly influenced photographers like Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Catherine Opie. Amazon