Stephen Shore’s Photographs Will Take You to the ’70s and Back Again
Take nostalgia, a deep sentimentality and longing for the past. Then, add in the present. What’s created is a force evoked by the work of Stephen Shore, a photographer known for his mundane yet profound snapshots of American life across the country. Back in the ’70s when his photographs weren’t yet described as nostalgic, their seemingly banal purpose was questioned. Now, in the current century, different aspects of them including outmoded car models remain dated, but they still feel very much of the present.
Quite delightfully, Shore’s approach to shooting 8x10 eventually brought him back to his same approach for 35mm — one that involves seeing beyond the imposed frame and creating a photo that looks as if it was taken on the latter format. What began as focused methodology developed into intuition, as Shore evoked and retained mental images that can be likened to meditation. Without a doubt, it’s a practice that requires a focused state of awareness and concentration.
One day while shooting in Eastern Pennsylvania, Shore spotted a red and white Volkswagen van. Above it, a young boy stood against the window in a dentist’s office with his breath on the glass. With his 8x10, Shore documented this detail in high resolution while capturing the entire environment around this minute scene of action. As viewers, we can easily turn our attention from this detail to the foreground, then the photo’s background of houses on a hill, and back again to the boy.
With the emergence of Instagram, the same viewers have, to some extent, become meditative photographers. Digital feeds are the result of users surveying their environments through a portable screen that reflects their own displays, and the result is a form of self-awareness that acts as an unconscious reminder: what they’re looking at are not physical items, but a screen containing images of the items. As someone who first started taking photos on my iPhone before moving onto digital and later film, I could relate to this idea of envisioning a mental image and being practiced in brainstorming my ideas while allowing just enough room in the back of my mind for the unexpected.
As a high school student, Shore consistently hand-wrote his essays. He trained himself to prepare by brainstorming before embarking on a writing task to avoid mistakes and tangential points that would most likely require him to start anew. Later, he found that this severely limited his ability to think spontaneously. Photographers who use digital cameras can often lose a sense of intentionality that fuels their film photography. When shooting film, they fumble with a hesitation that’s detrimental to the craft. A sort of self-censorship is imposed; it’s antithetical to the digital approach, where dozens of unintentional photographs can be taken in a matter of seconds.
Shore’s solution to this problem is a third approach, one that is simultaneously spontaneous and intentional. When he shoots a 8x10, he positions a quarter where the center of his tripod will be placed. When he returns to the location with the necessary equipment, he embraces any intersecting pedestrians and unanticipated elements that may later enter the frame. The key is being meta-cognitively attentive to the presence of a mental image that reflects the digital process while still allowing for spontaneity. At the same time, Shore doesn’t subject himself to a strict set of rules. Rather than imposing a standard where he isn’t permitted to take a second photo of the same scene, Shore is so sure in knowing what he wants that he is often able to do so without requiring a second chance or a search for the perfect photograph through the viewfinder of his camera. Shore’s confidence is conveyed through his 1999 book American Surfaces which introduced a new style of color photography that contrasted the formal black-and-white photos canonized as the standard for art photography at the time.
LACMA curator Britt Salvesen likens photography to speaking rather than a more precise form of communication like writing. Given that, Shore’s photography follows a style that reflects conversational speech in a visual form: vernacular photography. His knowledge and mastery of formalities is dissected in a way that’s conveyed in an approachable, colloquial, and even intimate manner. Just as typing on a computer leads to writers adopting different voices and structures, Shore believes different cameras possess distinct personalities that inform their photographers. The medium and instrument used to carry out an art form surely affects the outcome.
