Stephen Shore (is Everywhere)
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July 1972
© Stephen Shore
I’ve never seen Stephen Shore lecture. I’m not certain why, but I always seem to miss his talks.
There are a number of different interviews online that I’ve read in an attempt to compensate — this is genreally what I do if I can’t speak with or listen to the artist in person — but it’s not the same.
Most recently, though, this film clip has been all over the place! The movie consists of the American color photography legend photographing with his 8×10 camera, discussing the development of his work, Warhol, instincts, interests, teaching, and then a wonderful discussion about light and space within specfic photographs. I hadn’t seen the video due to the host site exceeding it’s bandwidth limit, but as soon as the probelm was fixed, I watched. It proved to be well worth the wait.
I particularly enjoyed Shore’s comments about the process of, what he calls, visual thinking:
There’s a kind of visual thinking that goes on that is without words — and not just words spoken, but not even words in one’s head. Most people think thinking has to do with words, this little voice in your head. But there’s a visual thinking that doesn’t have that.
And then, again on 2point8, I was directed to this (in my opinion even better) audio interview, which includes this great comment from Shore:
I went on to Flickr and it was just thousands of pieces of shit, and I just couldn’t believe it. And it’s just all convential, it’s all cliches, it’s just one visual convention after another.
The irony is that I just added my own Flickr stream to the sidebar.
January 20th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Speaking of Mr. Shore…
I heard him speak at Arcadia U. back in October. From the first time I saw his photographs I was interested and enamored, perhaps a little obsessed for a while. I, too, read just about anything I could get my hands on. I even took a trip to upstate NY to meet him at Bard where he teaches.
Stephen is a great thinker and educator, but when he talked at Arcadia it was such a bad example of his genius. I had never sat through such a boring discussion between artist. If you go to see him speak, pray that whatever the circumstance is, that it will motivate the speaker. It’s no doubt that Uncommon Places has had a recurrence of popularity in recent years, I think he might just be tired of talking about that work.
January 21st, 2007 at 9:15 pm
he must not have been talking about us.
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:38 am
[...] Il faut tout arreter, et regarder cette petite vid√©o sur Stephen Shore, non pas parce qu’elle est partout pour le moment*, mais surtout parce que les apparitions de Shore sont tr√®s rares. * Conscientious, qui annonce cette vid√©o, The Online Photographer, qui annonce aussi cette vid√©o, Mrs. Deane, qui… annonce aussi cette vid√©o (et se pose des questions sur qui est son myst√©rieux assistant), et chez Shane Lavalette qui annonce la vid√©o mais donne aussi quelques liens vers des interviews de Shore et, surtout, vers cet interview sonore. [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I am sure he didn’t look at the best pictures on flickr.
But it is funny to know that he was actually on the site.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
he sucked big time when I saw him, and he left a big asshole taste in my mouth.
Mr Big Shot
April 4th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
[...] The last time I mentioned Stephen Shore, I was groaning about always missing his lectures and having to resort to magazine and audio interviews to get a sense of him as a human being. Fortunately, I’ll finally be able to see him talk as tomorrow (on my birthday!) Mr. Shore will be discussing his work along with his new book The Nature of Photographs. [...]
April 8th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Shane,
Robert Knight sent me a link to this page a few days after the BU lecture. I thought it was interesting because we are both from Burlington and our circles have come close, I think. I believe you know Trevor and Ryan, and perhaps Audra. In any case, I went to the lecture and thought that Shore wasn’t very well put together. Maybe it was because of my high expectations, but I thought his comments were ultimately pointless bragging. Then, when the question and answer section came, he got offended easily and only enjoyed answering question that allowed him to talk about how great his experience has been. I still think some of his work is fantastic, but his reasoning behind the work I already dislike only furthered my opinion.
August 9th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
[...] back in January, I wrote about Stephen Shore and linked to the audio interview where he was quoted as saying (note the bold [...]
October 19th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Thanks for the link to my website (a long time ago). Stephen Shore was pretty cool when I met him. Low key. He doesn’t like to talk when he works. He’s silent except for the back and forth with his assistant about light meter readings. But when he stops taking pictures, he’s great to talk to. He’s a photography professor at Bard, so he’s used to speaking about why photographs work or don’t. I always found that he had a sound reason behind all of his statements. His points of view were always well thought out.
Stephen’s little film clip on my website has been linked to by tons of photo blogs, most recently by a slew of Japanese photo bloggers. I have been astounded by how popular the video has been and continues to be.
-Jay