Stephen Shore

I was cleaning out the area in the garage where I keep a lot of my art books (all wrapped and protected, of course) and noticed a box that needed some work. (Before you write me telling how awful it is that my books are in boxes, know that I am having a huge bookshelf built in the family room that will hold them. I love books. A lot.) In the box I found one of my favorite books by Stephen Shore. I had been thinking about his quiet style for a while now and finding this book was almost eery. The book, "Uncommon Places", is powerful for its gentleness. Shore's images present a world that is right around us, but unseen for its familarness. Shore isolates and deftly composes the natural world in such a way that the seemingly mundane becomes a tapestry of discovery. UCLA has a nice page on an exhibit of his here: they refer to his work as Biographical Landscape.

This quote from Shore is at the Getty page:

A quote that I like very much... comes close to explaining my attitude about taking photographs.... "Chinese poetry rarely trespasses beyond the bounds of actuality... the great Chinese poets accept the world exactly as they find it in all its terms and with profound simplicity... they seldom talk about one thing in terms of another; but are able enough and sure enough as artists to make the ultimately exact terms become the beautiful terms."
--Stephen Shore

His work in the commercial realm is equally fascinating and you can see some of that here.

Stephen Shore is a photographer that continues to inspire me, and the ability to go between the worlds of fine art and commercial should be an inspiration to all of us.