Stephen Shore: Essex County
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Not many people, when they think of Stephen Shore, will call up the black and white photographs that he began making in the early 90s in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains. That’s understandable - I don’t know that it’d be the first thing to come to my mind, either.
I recently looked at the book of these images, which Shore titled Essex County (2002).
Though the monochrome photographs of tree trunks and rocks suggest the word “ordinary” in all its meanings, I’ve come to realize that part of what I love most about Shore’s American vernacular is, however visually dissimilar, a large part of this work.
Made 20 years after Uncommon Places, Shore’s newest imagery, upon first reading, seems to have done an about-face from the course set two decades ago. For one thing, they’re black-and-white. For another, these are close-ups of tree trunks, moss-covered rocks, and subtle, almost quaint photographs of leaves dusting the forest floor. But in a recent phone conversation - Shore was driving to Parent’s Day at his son’s Connecticut college - he convincingly elaborated the vital relationship between these two disparate bodies of work, cemented not by the fact of the 8×10 view camera that has remained his companion, but rather by ideas.
(from “Essex County”)
© Stephen Shore
The view camera monumentalizes things by close observation, by saturation of detail. Shore stated that this fact so often stymies students who search for a subject worthy of such attention. But one doesn’t have to find something monumental to photograph. Though it’s true that, for Shore, the 8×10 equates with a heightened sense of awareness in the world, that awareness can be applied to the everyday. This is the essential link between the earlier color work and this rich new body of images.
Buy a limited edition copy (50 numbered and signed copies comes with an original print tipped on to the front of the cover) here.
