Stephen Shore: uncommon places

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Excerpt from Amazon Editorial Review
Uncommon Places—a visionary series of images of the American vernacular landscape of the seventies and early eighties by Stephen Shore—stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition over the past three decades.

Shore wants us to see through his eyes because he sees these spaces as extraordinary and beautiful. He approaches his subjects with cool objectivity, the photographs seemingly devoid of drama or commentary. Yet each image has been distilled, retaining precise internal systems of gestures in composition and light through which a parking lot emptied of people, a hotel bedroom, or a building on a side street assumes both an archetypal aura and an ambiguously personal importance. The photographs that are presented to us are—on face value—seemingly humdrum. A street corner with telegraph poles, a motel bathroom with water in the bath. But on closer inspection there is a haunting beauty to the images; an aching sadness of dislocation, but at the same time oddly uplifting.

Imagine if you will, taking a camera across America and shooting buildings, roads, humble homes, and desolate scenery without a specific concern of cohesiveness or narrative. These “any-town, anyplace” photographs are perhaps a celebration of our own lives in our own environments. The familiar denies the beauty of our surroundings. What Shore does so eloquently is show us how to look at our world again. There’s no politics here, no judgement; this is a straightforward depiction of our homes, towns, cities and countryside that we don’t see because our lives are too rushed and complicated to stop and for half an hour stand by. Shore’s shoulder and take a peak at what he loves about his world.

We get two opportunities with Uncommon Places; we get the chance to spend time absorbed by the huge detail of these scenes, and we get the enormous benefit of seeing the world as through Stephen Shore’s eyes. And the world is a better place for it.