Fine art photographer Stephen Shore embraces the digital revolution.


One of my favorite American photographers known for his panaramic landscapes and photographs of banal objects.   (Long before Terry or anyone else shot a tv dinner)   His use of color in
fine art photography was ground breaking.
He switched to an 8x10 view
camera for his journey from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas and shot work
that would end up the masterpiece in his 1982 book Uncommon Places.  
This work also resulted in a ground breaking show at the MOMA in NY in
1976.    Like Eggleston before him, it was one of the first times a
color photograph was considered fine art.

Color
artists like Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, Joel Sternfeld and Martin Parr
have all   acknowledged Shore in his influence on their work.   Please
check out THE NATURE OF PHOTOGRAPHS (Phaidon, 2007) and his new book
STEPHEN SHORE (phaidon) .    For a complete list of published work see
the end of this blog.




























I met Mr. Shore at 303 gallery in NYC a
few years back.    I was buying a photograph of his and he happened to
be there so we chatted in the back room.    He was a charming and
interesting man, full of exhuberance and excitement.     He showed me
his iphoto digital books and was very excited about where photography
was going.   The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently bought a complete
set of Stephen Shore's iphoto books.     Honestly, I wasn't crazy about
them at the time, just because the large format color work from the
1970's  was so majestic and strong.   This is huge though, to be
acknowledged by a museum of this stature.     I'm curious to see how 
digital photography influences  the art world .    Stay tuned.  In the
meantime check out   Loretta Lux, and Jill Greenberg both of whom use a
complete digital workflow with their photography.    

If you are
a budding collector, a photographer or just a lover of art and
photography.     You will find affordable art- start nurturing and
collecting it.   Take pictures and start trading art with your
friends.           Get out to your local galleries, attend photography
conventions, go to art shows at colleges like UCLA, Art Center, Cal
Arts, Yale, Columbia.   You will find affordable art.        It will
enrich your life and make you happy when u see it everyday.

Stephen Shore books:

Books
of his photographs include Uncommon Places; Uncommon Places: 50
Unpublished Photographs; Essex County; The Gardens at Giverny; Stephen
Shore: Photographs 1973 - 1993; and The Velvet Years, Andy Warhol's
Factory, 1965 - 1967. In 1998, Johns Hopkins University Press published
The Nature of Photographs, a book he wrote about how photographs
function visually (reprinted in an expanded edition by Phaidon Press).
Most recently, Aperture has published Uncommon Places: The Complete
Work and Phaidon has published American Surfaces

He is represented by 303 Gallery in New York; Sprüth Magers in Cologne, Munich, and London; and Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels.

Currently,
Shore is the director of the photography department at Bard College, a
position he has held since 1982. (wikipedia source)