Product Description

Published by Aperture in 1982 and long unavailable, 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. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works presents a definitive collection of the original series, much of it never before published or exhibited. Like Robert Frank and Walker Evans before him, Shore discovered a hitherto unarticulated version of America via highway and camera. Approaching his subjects with cool objectivity, Shore's images retain precise internal systems of gestures in composition and light through which the objects before his lens assume both an archetypal aura and an ambiguously personal importance. In contrast to Shore's signature landscapes with which "Un-common Places" is often associated, this expanded survey reveals equally remarkable collections of interiors and portraits. As a new generation of artists expands on the projects of the New Topographic and New Color photographers of the seventies--Thomas Struth (whose first book was titled Unconscious Places), Andreas Gursky, and Catherine Opie among them--Uncommon Places: The Complete Works provides a timely opportunity to reexamine the diverse implications of Shore's project and offers a fundamental primer for the last thirty years of large-format color photography. Essay by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen. Interview by Lynne Tillman. Hardcover, 12.75 x 10.5 in./188 pgs / 162 color and 7 b&w.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26998 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-15
• Released on: 2005-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 180 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A teenaged photographic aspirant who hung around at Andy Warhol’s factory in its mid-60s heyday, Shore found success early: his first show at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was held when he was only 23. These 152 full-page, full-color shots comprise his serial project of the 70s, "Uncommon Places," which documented roadside America with a dispassionate, Andy-like emptiness. It’s an aesthetic that has been endlessly co-opted by American filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Jim Jarmusch, but some of these 12 7/8" × 10 5/16" shots of prairies, parking lots, polyester-clad couples and plastic hotel furnishings manage to seem fresh nonetheless. Shore’s concluding interview with Lynn Tillman makes the Warhol connection explicit, and argues for a kind of meaning-making from the void: "Formalism often sounds like a kind of visual nicety, but if I use it, that’s not how I mean it." Beautiful, lush reproductions with minimal captions allow the photos to speak for themselves.
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About the Author
At the age of 24, Stephen Shore became the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Among his numerous other one-man shows, Shore has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. He has received several awards for his photography including two National Endowment for the Arts Grants and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. He has been the Chair of the photography department at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. since 1982.

Customer Reviews

'...and now, the rest of the story'.
On page six of this large book, Stephen Shore writes, in the Artist's Note, "The book you are holding in your hands amounts to what might be called the photographic equivalent of a director's cut". It is in the nature of such things you now get an additional ninety-four photos with the forty-nine that were in the original 1982 Aperture edition, though this is not strictly true because some that were in the original are not in this edition.

I bought the original book because I loved the way Shore captured the everyday urban American outdoors and of course the amazing color and detail. This new edition is even better because the photos are now larger, mostly 10.5 by 8.25 inches. The other thing I love about some of these photos is the way Shore captures the street corner, this seems to be a favorite composition (stretching back to the famous FSA photos of the Thirties) with contemporary photographers and Photorealists painters like Richard Estes or Davis Cone. Shore's 'El Paso Street, Texas, July 5, 1975' could just as easily be an Estes painting. There are several corner photos in the book and they are just stunning.

Another reviewer has commented on the amount of detail in these photos, helped of course by the two hundred plus screen, the original book used a 175 dpi. Apart from the screen it is interesting to compare images that appear in both books and the color does vary. 'Beverly Boulevard, June 21 1975' in the original (page 39) is predominately brown for the street area, in this edition (page 115) it has changed to a predominately blue cast. I wonder if this is the sort of thing that concerns collectors of first edition photo books?

In addition to the photos in this beautifully designed and printed book there are two text pieces, the first one, by Stephen Schmidt-Wulffen, includes twelve photos from Shore's 'American Surfaces'. The back of the book includes biographical notes and a useful bibliography.

This latest 'Uncommon Places' will be a book I'll look through for some years to come.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I love it
This is a very nice book featuring the worls of Stephen Shore. As usual Aperture put together a very nice book. The printing and binding are top notch.

If you have never seen the work of Stephen Shore you are in for a real treat. His classic urban landscapes are very original and are beautifully done in this book

Awesome
This is my new favorite book. I found it by accident as I didn't know Stephen Shore. The feeling, mood, and color in his images are so great. If you're like me who like anything 70's, then you will love this book.

His photography was considered very cutting edge at a time when all fine art was shot in black & white. Mr. Shore has a gift to make the ordinary like extra-ordinary and beautiful. If you love photography, you need to own this book! [...]