New Color Photography movement – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Lucinda Devlin – Frames of Reference’ at the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

Exhibition dates: 10th March – 16th July 2023

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Bath, Pocono Palace, Marshall’s Creek, Pennsylvania
1980
From the series Pleasure Ground
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

I love these works in series!

Frames of reference: spaces that humans construct (mainly interiors that serve specific functions) – for example, spaces of pleasure, corporate arenas, sanctioned death chambers, subterranean spaces, human habitats for captured animals, fields of industrial agriculture.

Format: The square format perfectly supports the themes being investigated, balancing and tensioning the pictorial plane within each image.

Colour palette: The limited colour palette of each image heightens the atmosphere and focuses the senses of the viewer.

Lighting: As in a movie set or theatrical production, whether ambient light, spot light, interior light.

Staging: Nothing is out of place. These are utilitarian/utopian/dystopian spaces.

Everything is perfectly ordered within Devlin’s human(less) worlds… and yet the photographs are instilled with a hyperreality where everything is not as it seems, where spaces exist as a “reality” we do not normally perceive.

The luscious heart shaped red bath surrounded by a halo of lights and flowered red carpet; the unexpected, alien flippers in the round portal of an undersea lodge; “a surgical lamp that looks like an oversized star in the night sky which illuminates the pictorial space”; a bright yellow electric (in colour and intent) chair that looks like an oversized piece of Lego; the ether-reality of the purple haze glacier paradise at the Matterhorn. The spaces are full of human presence even as we acknowledge their physical absence. Their fossilised fingerprints are all over these fantastical creations – these disturbing, sometimes grim, fairy tales.

While acknowledging a debt to the history of photography through the New Color Photography movement, New Topographics, “the direct and objective methodology pursued by August Sander”, and “the strict comparative typology practiced by the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher” … the photographs are most definitely Devlin’s own. They hold a particular signature, more theatrical than ever New Topographics, Sander or the Bechers.

“The way each space is staged can tell us something about its intended impact and use.” And the recognition and interpretation of that staging can ultimately tell us as much about the artist as about the space itself: perfectionist, environmentalist, passionate creative artist who perceives difference in the everyday, who is aware, aware of the different realities that life (re)presents.

It’s best to view Devlin’s work in the complete series to get the full immersive effect. More photographs from each series can be found on the Lucinda Devlin website.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Lucinda Devlin – Frames of Reference

American artist Lucinda Devlin rose to fame in the 1990s with a series of soberly observed photographs of execution rooms in US correctional facilities titled “The Omega Suites.” The images caused a sensation at the Venice Biennale in 2001. One of the motifs had already attracted attention in 1992 when it was featured in a controversial advertising campaign for an Italian fashion label. “The Omega Suites” is one of nine photographic series, along with a video, on view in Frames of Reference, the first large-scale survey to be devoted to Lucinda Devlin in Europe.

Devlin, once part of the New Color Photography movement, seeks out her motifs mainly in interiors that serve specific functions. Most of her subjects are in the USA, but she has also done projects in Germany and other countries. In the mid-2000s, the artist added landscape scenes to her repertoire.

One searches in vain for people in Devlin’s pictures, and yet her images tell of human sensitivities and values, evoking existential life questions. In the series “Pleasure Ground” (1977-1990), for example, Devlin provides glimpses of hotel rooms with fantasy themes, discotheques, and beauty salons – places that promise relaxation and enjoyment. By contrast, the interiors in the “Corporal Arenas” series (1982-1998) have an unsettling effect.

Operating rooms for human or animal patients, treatment spaces, and morgues are reproduced here in all objectivity. Viewers are compelled to reflect on their own feelings and experiences in such settings.

It was themes such as these that led the photographer to pursue the project she titled “The Omega Suites” (1991-1998). Devlin did not intend her photographs taken in maximum security prisons to be understood as a statement for or against the death penalty.

Contemplation of these very specific spaces is instead meant as an encouragement to engage personally with a difficult subject.

With the support of a DAAD grant, Devlin shot her series “Water Rites” (1999-2002) in German spas, adding a new twist to “Corporal Arenas.” “Water Rites” takes a look at what are in some cases time-honoured institutions devoted to promoting well-being as well as to healing and convalescence. In Devlin’s “Subterranea” series (ongoing since 1980), she focuses her lens on caves and tunnels that have been made accessible for various uses, reproducing in her pictures the luminous colours generated by artificial lighting schemes installed underground. The way each space is staged can tell us something about its intended impact and use. That Devlin’s interests extend beyond spaces occupied by humans is evident from her “Habitats” series (ongoing since 1985), which spotlights zoo enclosures and aquariums that are modelled on natural animal habitats.

With “Field Culture” (primarily since 2007), the artist has turned to the question of how humans shape the outdoor environment. Here she investigates industrial agriculture in the USA, where genetic engineering and the need to generate sufficient energy are major factors in food production.

Devlin has found an enduring source of inspiration in the vast expanses of Lake Huron, to which she dedicated a series between 2010 and 2019 called “Lake Pictures,” with images illustrating the beauty and grandeur of nature. She presents similarly imposing views of salt lakes and salt flats in Utah in the series “Salt” (ongoing since 2014).

The documentary and serial nature of Devlin’s projects suggests close parallels with the style of depiction represented in the collection of Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur. In the 1980s, while working as a university professor and curator, the artist already developed a fascination with the direct and objective methodology pursued by August Sander in his portraiture. And her photos also echo in some ways the strict comparative typology practiced by the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Here as well, compelling correlations can be found among the Cologne collection’s central holdings.

The exhibition has been made possible by generous loans from the artist; Galerie m, Bochum; DZ Bank, Frankfurt/Main; and private lenders.

A publication will accompany the exhibition, featuring essays by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Lucinda Devlin, and Claudia Schubert, as well as an interview conducted with the artist by Lisa Le Feuvre (Steidl Verlag, approx. 300 pages, DE/EN).

Press release from Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Jules UnderSea Lodge, Key Largo, Florida
1989
From the series Pleasure Ground
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Pleasure Ground

This series marks the beginning of Lucinda Devlin’s artistic work. Recorded between 1977 and 1996, for example in imaginative theme hotels, in spa and cosmetic areas, in discotheques or striptease bars. Where people seek pleasure and distraction from the toils of everyday life, where desires and dreams provide the incentive to set up these spaces. In their functions and legitimised offers, they are still rarely factual and people are presented in a virtually unrecorded way. They are “stages” for which social agreements exist, but also “space capsules” that are temporary and can become private, taboo-free zones. Socially harmonious, ritualised manners are to be expected as well as one’s hedonistic and borderline actions.

Red emerges as a prominent colour in Pleasure Ground, it signals warmth, love and eroticism. All the more so when in the vicinity of these “islands of happiness” as in the case of the humble Creative Pines Motel little more than highways, gas stations and fast food places. They appear flooded red light retreats with frivolously rigged equipment, even more of the rough world relieved. Lucinda Devlin’s numerous emblematic images in this group of works succeed. That of the heart-shaped whirlpool at Pocono Palace is one of them. The camera stands in the luxurious tub and exposes with the self-timer in the ceiling mirror installed above. This technical trick enabled Devlin to capture the big red heart framed with mirrors and lights undistorted and centred in the picture. The narrow square frame emphasises the rounded shape as well as the oscillating between near and deep space.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Massage Room, Greenbrier Hotel, White Sulphur Springs, WV
1989
From the series Corporal Arenas
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Corporal Arenas

For Lucinda Devlin, the question of physical well-being is of great importance: how much control over your own body and personality is given and in which moments one is in other hands or spheres of influence is handed over. Aspects that make them different in the field of medical treatment and examination rooms for humans and animals. So explores the photographer in her series Corporal Arenas, created between 1986 and 1998, insights into sometimes highly specialised rooms that are mostly shielded from the outside world connect with exceptional situations up to death, while the rooms present themselves as workplaces for certain professional groups.

The picture Operating Room # 8, Forrest General Hospital Hattiesburg is a salient example that meets both the requirements of an operating room clarified as well as the skilful implementation of the subject. He is almost in the middle of the picture operating table provided with a cover protected by cloths. Essential for the constellation is a surgical lamp that looks like an oversized star in the night sky which illuminates the pictorial space above the table to the floor while the surroundings disappear in the dark. This light and line management creates a balanced image geometry. The furnishings thus gain a type spiritual power. Even an altar can be associated.

The other practice rooms considered by Devlin are also connected by a pragmatic decor with smooth, easy-to-clean surfaces and prevailing artificial light. Mostly, however, these are lighter and can be walked through visually. Lucinda Devlin’s pictures also connect in this way to soberly presented documentation views from health technology or from textbooks. But what sets her recordings apart is that they are far removed from any idealised model and in them material ageing and signs of wear as well as irregularities in the arrangement of objects have their place.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Operating Room #8, Forrest General Hospital, Hattiesburg
1998
From the series Corporal Arenas
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Scotch Douche, The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia
1989
From the series Corporal Arenas
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Electric Chair, Holman Unit, Atmore, Alabama
1991
From the series The Omega Suites
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

The Omega Suites

With her views of execution rooms in American prisons, in which are electric chairs, operating tables for administering lethal injections are located or the massive lockable entrances of gas chambers are show, Lucinda Devlin raises awareness of an oppressive topic: the enforcement of the death penalty, which applies in the US and in other countries. However, the photographer is concerned with her project – which took place between 1991 and 1998 in over 20 correctional facilities in various US states – which is neither a sensation nor an accusation. Again, she relies on her thoughtful restrained imagery, which is characterised by realistic colouring and precise perspective and line management of the pictorial space. Not only finding execution rooms with windows and executioners’ technical rooms but also neighbouring cells in which the convicts spend their last hours. There are also rooms for witnesses to witness the execution through a window. To carry out the photographic work Lucinda Devlin completed extensive research. Only the locations of the institutions were laboriously located by her – at that time without the internet – each visit prepared by prior correspondence. A selection of extensive correspondence can be seen in the exhibition showcases.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Ruheraum, Friedrichsbad, Baden-Baden, Germany
1999
From the series Water Rites
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Water Rites

At the end of the 1990s, Lucinda Devlin developed her Water Rites series. The series is themed with and performs in conjunction with Corporal Arenas, facilities that deal with the physical and mental well-being of the people. Specific objects are the typical spa and bathing landscapes with its extensive range of medical treatments and wellness offers. Lucinda Devlin has visited traditional spa towns where the element of water is used and therapeutic measures for healing are practiced. The American art historian Michael Mackenzie states that that the construction periods of the baths visited by Lucinda Devlin can be divided into three phases: “The earliest is the architecture of the 19th century with its high tiled rooms, with the equipment made of cast iron and stainless steel. They are followed by the cool clinical rooms of the healthcare industry during the post-war period and finally as a recent development spaces that are modelled like ice caves or Arabian oases and the surprising fantasy rooms of American hotels from the Pleasure Ground series” (in: Lucinda Devlin: Water Rites, Göttingen 2003, p. 6)

An overview of the motifs from Water Rites confirms that the photographer is especially looking at manageable parts of the room as well as utensils and furnishings in which the room is dressed, which she encounters at eye level with her camera and gives an optical order by maintaining the central perspective; thus creating an emblem that, like a trademark, has a direct visual access allowed. Again in this series, Lucinda Devlin asks to what extent the body and thus the affected individual has the possibility and ability to control and regulate these influences, or whether this is done by the person or is desired at all.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Massageraum #1, Hufeland Therme, Bad Pyrmont
2002
From the series Water Rites
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Römische Bäder, Carolus Thermen, Bad Aachen
2002
From the series Water Rites
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Glacier Paradise at the Matterhorn #4, Zermatt, Switzerland
2008
From the series Subterranea
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Subterranea

As with the Habitats series, Subterranea dates back to the 1980s. The subject of the series are different natural cave formations in America and Europe, Lucinda Devlin also has tunnels from the former mining industry included.

The cave is always in its uses, as well as in representational contexts, been connected with basic human needs and issues. Due to its circumstances, it can be considered the archetype of dwelling, it can be used as a shelter as well as serve a place of worship. Early evidence of human expression can be found in caves, one thinks, for example, of the paintings of Lascaux in France or of those in Spanish Altamira. For Lucinda Devlin, who designs functional spaces as an expression of cultural self-understanding and cultural acceptance, caves may appear to be downright predestined, and this is exactly what she visually reflects. A look at art history reveals a long iconographic tradition of cave representations. In the visualisation of Christian themes for example the birth of Jesus not only in a stable, but often in one cave shown. His grave is also sometimes located in a rock cave. Saints such as Aegidius are depicted in cave settings. In the psychoanalytic Dream Interpretation can symbolise the unconscious or a reference to caves be female sexuality.

Caves are shrouded in mystery, dark and cool, you can get inside them get lost and never find out. They are fear rooms or can offer protection and be a hiding place in threatening situations. This complexity and ambivalence is captivating in Lucinda Devlin’s recordings in which transparent, iridescent colours are definitely perceptible. The images contrast light and dark, allow a glimpse into corridors whose end cannot be made out and offer bizarre sculptural rock formations.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Lake Huron, 9/1/2012 6-31am
2012
From the series Lake Pictures
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lake Pictures

In 2010, the first recording was made on the shore of Lake Huron, which is one of the five great lakes of the USA. Until 2019 Lucinda Devlin worked on this series, which differs conceptually and compositionally from its other series. First it is noticeable that they always have a view looking out over the shore viewpoint photographing the lake towards the east. The central picture element is the horizon which Devlin takes at the same height and in the centre of each picture. Accurate to the second, Lucinda Devlin has the time, day, month and year noted for each photograph. Through this precision, combined with the rigorous image structure, the series has the character of a painterly quality for all empirical series that brings together comparative meteorological observations. Seasons, light situations, sky formations and the texture of the water can be understood so clearly that in their interaction they become the real actors. They seem endless variations and leave impressions of a high degree of artistic abstraction which emerge to invite contemplation and reflection.

In addition, it is important to Lucinda Devlin to point out the existential importance in reference to the element of water, from which life arose and without it no life is possible on planet earth. Lake Huron offers the photographer an essential, at the same time exemplary, field of exploration which brings significant habitat to the region, its biodiversity threatened from environmental pollution and climate change.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Lake Huron, 9/1/2012 6:44am
2012
From the series Lake Pictures
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Lake Huron, 3-4-13, 6-31pm
2013
From the series Lake Pictures
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Pygmy Hippopotamus, Berlin Zoo, Germany
1999
From the series Habitats
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Habitats

The Habitats series has been photographed in numerous zoos and aquariums since the 1980s originating mainly in America. In this decade lies the beginning of Lucinda Devlin’s interest in the animal world and in particular how humans interact with the creatures they handle. In order to trace this request, zoological gardens were a very suitable terrain. The photographer especially likes aquariums, her fascination with the element of water can also be felt here, mirrored repeatedly. But basically, aquariums are like the enclosures of zoos around constructed purpose-built spaces, around replicas of natural habitats, ideally the needs of the respective animal adjusted. Lucinda Devlin argues that this must inevitably be an illusion, as in a touching picture of a pygmy hippopotamus in the Berlin zoo from 1999. The animal stands on the bottom of its pool and nudges its snout against a glass border. As can be in front of a shop window with goods on offer the zoo visitor – currently the viewer of the photograph – from a safe distance look at every movement of the living being in front of him. About zoology and animal science, it is a central function of zoological gardens to meet this human need to see. This is also intended as a mastery of man over nature.

And yet, in Lucinda Devlin’s Habitats series, there are photographic compositions that seem to elude real space. So drift in a picture three jellyfish through seemingly infinite deep blue waters in one, in others a shark swims directly towards the viewer. Habitats is the only series showing those for whom the spaces have been created.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Georgia Aquarium #1 (Shark), Atlanta
2021
From the series Habitats
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Turbine Base, Earl Park, IN
2009
From the series Field Culture
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Field Culture

Lucinda Devlin also sees the outside space as a designed space, shaped according to human needs and ideas. Her series Field Culture redeems this to a particular degree by showing the diverse phenomena of industrial agriculture in the USA. In the Corn Belt states and beyond, which are characterised by large-scale cultivation of grain, cotton or soya, for example, is in what the photographer finds her own expressive motifs. Monocultures prevail in these areas, geared towards maximum yield and profit. Such conditions can only be with appropriate plant breeding, often implemented using genetic engineering, chemical fertilisers and intensive energy management. Lucinda Devlin has the necessary structures, constructions and buildings in her series to provide numerous insights. In numerous photographs technology dominates nature, traditional forms of tillage are a thing of the past, direct contact with the earth is only a marginal phenomenon. A shot of the view into a magenta-coloured illuminated greenhouse, the futuristic-surreal. Another shot shows the entrance to one wind turbine reminiscent of a rocket.

Lucinda Devlin sees her Field Culture series in the tradition of the legendary New Topographics. It was under this name in 1975 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, an exhibition of photographs by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel were shown. They all have a critical view of the environment they encounter: no untouched nature, no romantic moods, no reverential bowing to nature characterise her pictorial creations. Rather, it is a far-reaching urban sprawl with highways and related motels, parking lots and gas stations, industry and peripherals that determine the American landscape.

Text translated from the German by Google Translate from the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur

Lucinda Devlin (American, b. 1947)
Greenhouse 48, Copperstate Farms, Snowflake, Arizona
2022
From the series Field Culture
© Lucinda Devlin, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

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Exhibition: ‘Stephen Shore’ at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Exhibition dates: 19th November, 2017 – 28th May, 2018

Stephen Shore is organised by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, with Kristen Gaylord, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, MoMA.

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
West 9th Avenue, Amarillo, Texas, October 2, 1974
1974, printed 2013
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor
© 2017 Stephen Shore

The truth in the detail of day-to-day life

1970s colour photography is the key period in the work of Stephen Shore. These classical, formal colour photographs capture “mundane aspects of American popular culture in straightforward, unglamorous images.” They are what made him famous. They are, historically, conceptually and emotionally, his most effective means of communication as an artist.

American Surfaces and Uncommon Places made Shore “one of the most prominent figures of the American New Color movement,” showing colour just as colour.

I know that is a strange thing to say, but Shore was showing the world in a different light… and he was using an aesthetic based on the straight forward use of colour. Colour is just there, part of the form of the image. Of course there are insightful subjective judgements about what to photograph in American surburbia, but this subjectivity and the use of colour within it is subsumed into the song that Shore was composing. It all comes back to music. Here’s a Mozart tune, this is his aesthetic, for eternity.

I remember seeing two vintage Stephen Shore chromogenic colour prints from 1976 where the colours were still true and had not faded in the exhibition American Dreams: 20th century photography from George Eastman House at Bendigo Art Gallery. This was incredible experience – seeing vintage prints from one of the masters of colour photography; noticing that they are not full of contrast like a lot of today’s colour photographs – more like a subtle Panavision or Technicolor film from the early 1960s. Rich, subtle, beautiful hues with the photograph containing this amazing presence, projected through the construction of the image and the physicality of the print.

Shore has a fantastic eye and his colour photographs are beautifully resolved. The subjectivity is not pushed, because his song was in tune, and he just sang it. Like his contemporaries, Wiliam Eggleston, Richard Misrach and Joel Meyerwitz, there are some artists who just know how to play the tune.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Stephen Shore encompasses the entirety of the artist’s work of the last five decades, during which he has conducted a continual, restless interrogation of image making, from the gelatin silver prints he made as a teenager to his current engagement with digital platforms. One of the most significant photographers of our time, Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947) has often been considered alongside other artists who rose to prominence in the 1970s by capturing the mundane aspects of American popular culture in straightforward, unglamorous images. But Shore has worked with many forms of photography, switching from cheap automatic cameras to large-format cameras in the 1970s, pioneering the use of colour before returning to black and white in the 1990s, and in the 2000s taking up the opportunities of digital photography, digital printing, and social media.

The artist’s first survey in New York to include his entire career, this exhibition will both allow for a fuller understanding of Shore’s work, and demonstrate his singular vision – defined by an interest in daily life, a taste for serial and often systematic approaches, a strong intellectual underpinning, a restrained style, sly humour, and visual casualness – and uncompromising pursuit of photography’s possibilities.

Stephen Shore | MoMA LIVE

Join us for a conversation with MoMA Chief Curator of Photography Quentin Bajac and artist Stephen Shore on the opening of the exhibition, “Stephen Shore,” moderated by MoMA Senior Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Peter Reed.

One of the most significant photographers of our time, Stephen Shore has often been considered alongside other artists who rose to prominence in the 1970s by capturing the mundane aspects of American popular culture in straightforward, unglamorous images. But Shore has worked with many forms of photography, and this exhibition encompasses the entirety of the artist’s work of the last five decades, during which he has conducted a continual, restless interrogation of image making, from the gelatin silver prints he made as a teenager to his current engagement with digital platforms.

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
New York, New York
1964
Gelatin silver print
9 1/8 × 13 1/2 in. (23.2 × 34.3cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
1:35 a.m., in Chinatown Restaurant, New York, New York
1965-1967, printed c. 1995
Gelatin silver print
9 × 13 1/2 in. (22.9 × 34.3cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Kanab, Utah, June 1972
1972, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
3 1/16 × 4 5/8 in. (7.8 × 11.7cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Amarillo, Texas, July 1972
1972, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
3 1/16 × 4 5/8 in. (7.8 × 11.7cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Washington, D.C., November 1972
1972, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
3 1/16 × 4 5/8 in. (7.8 × 11.7cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Second Street, Ashland, Wisconsin, July 9, 1973
1973, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973
1973, printed 2002
Chromogenic colour print
17 3/4 x 21 15/16 in. (45.1 x 55.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Photography Council Fund
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Breakfast, Trail’s End Restaurant, Kanab, Utah, August 10, 1973
1973
Chromogenic colour print
16 7/8 × 21 1/4 in. (42.8 × 54cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
West Third Street, Parkersburg, West Virginia, May 16, 1974
1974
Chromogenic colour print
8 × 10 1/2 in. (20.3 × 26.7cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Lookout Hotel, Ogunquit, Maine, July 16, 1974
1974, printed 2013
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor
© 2017 Stephen Shore

The Museum of Modern Art presents the most comprehensive exhibition ever organised of photographer Stephen Shore’s work, on view from November 19, 2017, until May 28, 2018. The exhibition tracks the artist’s work chronologically, from the gelatin silver prints he made as a teenager to his current work with digital platforms. Stephen Shore establishes the artist’s full oeuvre in the context of his time – from his days at Andy Warhol’s Factory through the rise of American colour photography and the transition to large-scale digital photography – and argues for his singular vision and uncompromising pursuit of photography’s possibilities. The exhibition will include hundreds of photographic works along with additional materials including books, ephemera, and objects. Stephen Shore is organised by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, with Kristen Gaylord, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, MoMA.

Born in 1947, Shore spearheaded the New Color Photography movement in the United States in the 1970s, and became a major catalyst in the renewal of documentary photography in the late 1990s, both in the US and Europe, blending the tradition of American photographers such as Walker Evans with influences from various artistic movements, including Pop, Conceptualism, and even Photo-Realism. Shore’s images seem to achieve perfect neutrality, in both subject matter and approach. His approach cannot be reduced to a style but is best summed up with a few principles from which he has seldom deviated: the search for maximum clarity, the absence of retouching and reframing, and respect for natural light. Above all, he exercises discipline, limiting his shots as much as possible – one shot of a subject, and very little editing afterward.

Shore started developing negatives from his parents when he was only six, received his first camera when he was nine, and sold prints to Edward Steichen, then director of MoMA’s Department of Photography, at the age of 14. In the early 1960s Shore became interested in film, both narrative and experimental, and he showed his short film Elevator in 1965 at the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, where he first met Andy Warhol. That spring, he dropped out of high school and started photographing at Warhol’s studio, The Factory, initially on an almost daily basis, then more sporadically, until 1967. Elevator has been restored by conservators and will be screened in the exhibition for the first time since the 1960s.

In 1969, Shore used serial black-and-white projects to deconstruct the medium and rebuild it on a more detached, intellectual foundation. In these works, many shot in Amarillo, Texas, with his friend Michael Marsh as his main model, Shore was striving to free himself from certain photographic conventions: the concept of photography as the art of creating isolated and “significant” images, and the related cult of the “decisive moment”; perfect framing; and the expressive subjectivity of the photographer. The principle of multiplicity prevails in Shore’s work of that period – series, suites, and sequences that resist all narrative temptation. In their attempt to eliminate subjectivity, these series are related to a number of Conceptual photographic works by other artists of the same period.

In November 1971 Shore curated an exhibition called All the Meat You Can Eat at the 98 Greene Street Loft. Embracing a century of photography, the show was composed largely of found images collected by Shore and two friends, Weston Naef, then a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Michael Marsh. It also included images by Shore, such as shots taken with a Mick-a-Matic camera and colour photos that would serve as the basis for the postcards in his series Greetings from Amarillo, “Tall in Texas.” Stephen Shore will include a reconstructed version of this display, using material from Shore’s archives – some that was originally in the exhibition and some that has been selected by Shore for this installation.

In the early 1970s Shore turned to colour photography, a format that at that time was still largely overlooked by art photographers. In March 1972, he started taking snapshots of his daily life, embarking in June and July of the same year on a road trip to the southern US. For two months he photographed his everyday life in an almost systematic way – unremarkable buildings, main streets, highway intersections, hotel rooms, television screens, people’s faces, toilet seats, unmade beds, a variety of ornamental details, plates of food, shop windows, inscriptions, and commercial signs. In September and October 1972, images from the series were shown at Light Gallery in New York under the title American Surfaces. The MoMA display of this work echoes that initial presentation, in which the small Kodacolor prints were attached directly to the wall, unframed, in a grid of three rows.

Begun in 1973 and completed almost 10 years later, Shore’s next project, Uncommon Places, inhabits the same world and deals with the same themes as American Surfaces. Yet because of Shore’s move from a handheld 35mm camera to a large-format one, Uncommon Places features fewer details and close-ups and a more detached approach. Appearing in the context of accelerated change in the national landscape, especially in areas of suburban sprawl, it betrays a more contemplative reading of individual images. Before being published as a book in 1982, the series was exhibited both in the US and abroad, especially in Germany, making Shore one of the most prominent figures of the American New Color movement. Though he is best known for his large-format work of this period, Shore was at the same time experimenting with other photographic formats. The exhibition will include a selection of stereo images he made in 1974 that were never published, and have not been exhibited since 1975.

While working on what would become Uncommon Places, Shore began to accept photographic commissions, not only for editorial work but also for institutions and companies. If some of these commissions seem quite distant from Uncommon Places, most of them still show some affinity with the series in their attention to architecture and exploration of “Americanness.” He took photographs focusing on contemporary vernacular architecture that the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown used in their 1976 exhibition Signs of Life: Symbols in the American City. This exhibition will feature some of the original, gridded transparencies from Signs of Life that incorporate images by Shore and other photographers, not seen since 1976. Finally, some commissions he did for magazines alternate between urban landscapes, portraits, and architectural details in a direct extension of Uncommon Places. Shore would include a number of commissioned photographs in his personal body of work, showing how porous the borders were between the two groups of images, and Stephen Shore will include examples both of the photographs in context in books and periodicals, and of others that were not subsequently published.

Starting in the late 1970s, Shore gradually abandoned urban and suburban areas and turned to the natural landscape, a subject he would concentrate on almost exclusively during the next decade. These included the landscapes of Montana (1982-1983), where he settled with his wife in 1980, Texas (1983-1988), and the Hudson Valley (1984-1986), where he moved in 1982, but also more international locations: the Highlands of Scotland (1988); Yucatán, in Mexico (1990); and finally the Po Valley, with a series in Luzzara, Italy (1993). This period corresponds also to a reduced public visibility of his photographic work, marked by fewer exhibitions, publications, and commissions.

In the early 2000s Shore began experimenting with digital tools and technologies that had only recently become available. Between 2003 and 2010, he made dozens of print-on-demand books, which were each printed in limited editions of 20 copies, making them similar to artist’s books. But the ease of production, speed of execution, democratic nature of the technique used, and modesty of the finished product are in direct line with the snapshots of American Surfaces and the immediacy of Polaroid images. In the choice of subjects and approaches, the series of books seems both literally and figuratively to be a mini-version of Shore’s entire oeuvre, blending and reworking the themes that have always been important to him – an exhaustive exploration of a particular subject or place, a penchant for the vernacular, an interest in sequence, a tendency toward autobiography, a search for a kind of immediacy, and a dry sense of humour – while still retaining its autonomy and specificity. A few years later he created Winslow, Arizona in a single day in 2013. The precise temporal duration of the series – one day from sunrise to sunset – links it to some of Shore’s print-on-demand books, but it takes on a new performance-based dimension. Over 180 of the pictures Shore took that day were presented, unedited and in the order in which they were shot, in a slide show, projected on a drive-in screen in Barstow, California, a few days after he took them.

In 1996 and 1997 Shore, who had always been fascinated by archaeology, undertook photographic projects around excavation sites in Israel and Italy, shooting solely in black and white. Within the archaeological remains of these vanished cities, Shore was especially interested in the human dimension, both domestic and secular, seen in bones, pottery, and vestiges of dwellings and shops. Then, between September of 2009 and the spring of 2011, Shore returned to the region five times, photographing throughout the entire territory from north to south, or From Galilee to the Negev, as he titled the book he published of a selection of his photographs in Israel and the West Bank. As indicated by the title and structure of the book, with chapters organised geographically, the project was guided by a topographical exploration. It mixes various temporalities – which are echoed by the diversity of the images – bringing together the “short term” of people and events with and the “long term” of the landscape and planet.

The photographs Shore took in Ukraine in the summer of 2012 and the fall of 2013 have as their subject the country’s Jewish community, specifically survivors of the Holocaust who are assisted today by the Survivor Mitzvah Project. Following three years of photographing primarily in Israel, the series provided Shore with the opportunity to continue working with subjects related to his Jewish roots. In a break from his norm, Shore structured the Ukraine series around the human figure. Survivors in Ukraine, the book of photographs he published in 2015, provides accounts of 22 survivors, all more than 80 years old, through a wide range of images: close-ups, busts, and full-length portraits; fragmentary portraits of hands, arms, and legs; views of dwellings and interiors; and still-life details of meals, belongings, and memorials to departed family members.

In the summer of 2014 Shore decided to devote most of his photographic activity to Instagram, where he posts images almost every day. While he continues to take on commissions, the bulk of his personal production over the past three years has been through the social networking app; he considers this output his current “work.” With Instagram Shore has reestablished a rapid, instantaneous practice, one that requires him to be on constant alert. It also presents a new, dual aesthetic challenge for Shore in the square format and the small size of the image. These constraints encourage a simplification of the picture, making it more a “notation” than a constructed image. Tablets will be stationed within a gallery of the exhibition, allowing viewers to scroll through Shore’s Instagram feed, which will feature new images as Shore continues to post them.

Press release from MoMA

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California, June 21, 1975
1975, printed 2013
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Thomas and Susan Dunn
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
U.S. 93, Wikieup, Arizona, December 14, 1976
1976, printed 2013
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Thomas and Susan Dunn
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Giverny, France, 1977
1977
Chromogenic colour print
7 11/16 x 9 5/8 in. (19.5 x 24.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the Estate of Lila Acheson Wallace
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Graig Nettles, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 1, 1978
1978
Chromogenic colour print
7 11/16 x 9 11/16 in. (19.5 x 24.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired with matching funds from Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1978
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979
1979, printed 2013
Chromogenic colour print
35 7/8 x 44 15/16 in. (91.2 x 114.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Gallatin County, Montana, August 2, 1983
1983, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
36 × 45 in. (91.4 × 114.3cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
County of Sutherland, Scotland, 1988
1988
Chromogenic colour print
35 1/2 × 45 1/2 in. (90.2 × 115.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Susan and Arthur Fleischer, Jr.
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Sderot, Israel, September 14, 2009
2009
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Peqi’in, Israel, September 22, 2009
2009
Chromogenic colour print
17 × 21 3/4 in. (43.2 × 55.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947)
Uman, Cherkaska Province, Ukraine, July 22, 2012
2012, printed 2017
Chromogenic colour print
16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8cm)
Courtesy the artist
© 2017 Stephen Shore

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