Stephen Shore's lenses?

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, I own the book, Uncommon Places, have seen plenty of the contact prints up
close, basically hate his style, consider the prints mediocre at best, detest his utterly monotonous two-color palette (sickly cyan and pumpkin orange every time), and have been influenced by him zero. Nevertheless, Shore is greater than the sum of his parts and has produced some truly intriguing images. The pictures routinely
look like they were made with something in the 10-inch range on 8x10. You've got
to give some of these guys back in the 70's real credit for taking the idiosyncrasies
of the color negative film and c-paper of the era and coming up with something
truly creative. There's a fine line between flauting the characteristics of the medium
and controlling it, and Shore was a master at working with what was available.

[Frank Petronio]

Hey Kirk more power to him for getting $50K for a C-print of Rexall Drug Store. That's the free market!

I'm just saying it is a little bit of a circle jerk how the professors end up defending each other (as in this very thread itself!). Joe gets Bob his show at the University gallery and Bob is on the jury that Joe submits to... Thus you get this sort of "group think" thing going, it's like Global Warming or Nazism, everyone just accepts it at the time whether or not it's legit. Nothing all that wrong about it, it's a free country. Except a lot of worthwhile people aren't in the circle. (And nowadays the circle is filled with lesbians so it's damn hard to have that circle jerk.)

Anyway back to lenses, I always thought that Joel Myerowitz and Richard Misrach were really the best at 8x10 color and they were never a part of the New Topographics crowd.

And it is telling that so many of most of the greatest, most memorable and iconic 8x10 images in the art world were done with "normal" lenses -- 240 to 360 on 8x10.

[Mark Sampson]

Frank, you're just cranky because your pictures of tattooed bikini babes get no respect from the art world. But it's not my fault, I bought a copy of your Blurb book...
I actually saw the New Topgraphics show at the Eastman House when I was a college student. It didn't make me want to go and make photos like Shore's, but it must have had some influence. I should have bought the catalogue then.

[Frank Petronio]

Oh I spent a couple of years photographing tract homes and then graduated to drainage pipes spewing into lakes and other such things, I was very heavily influenced by it all.

Yeah I was cranky last night at 3am, sorry Stephen. I actually like some of his deadpan stuff but what the heck was up when he did that "The Gardens at Giverny" book?

[venchka]

I'm more clueless than I give myself credit for. I've never heard of any of these folks. I guess I was too busy protecting Freedom in Germany and working to pay attention. Sam Haskins got my attention.

I'll give Mr. Shore credit for working with an 8x10 camera and color negative film. Everybody back then KNEW that the real true documentary work had to be done with 35mm Nikons or Leicas and Tri-X.

Back to the original question of lens choice. Does it matter?

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

For what it is worth: Stephen used (when I knew him in the 1980s) a 240 G-Claron and later switched to a 240mm Sironar-S. I also recall him talking about a Goerz lens, but can't remember of it was a Dagor or a Artar.

[claudiocambon]

The problem for me isn't the deadpan quality of a lot of the work Shore and others did, but that they were followed by a whole generation of deadpan imitators who flattened out the style to zero, emulating the form, and understanding only some of the content and motivations. You see the same thing now with the Duesseldorf School. The Bechers become the Gurskys and Hoefers and Struths, who I think are pretty great (even if the restraint wears on me as a style at times), but now we are seeing endless imitations thereof, vast landscapes with tiny figures tending towards the insignificant. Again, the form is spot on, but the content often seems diluted, too far away, emotionally cowardly.

I think Shore is a genius, but I will agree with Frank that the Giverny book is not my favorite.

[pkphotog]

I think Shore is a genius, but I will agree with Frank that the Giverny book is not my favorite.

I agree with you and Frank on that one.

[QT Luong]

Nixon did some cityscapes, I'd say most of his work is about the human figure, and couldn't be further from the detachment associated with the Topographics.

Take a look at Industrial Parks and Uncommon Places. Even if they were both in the same medium (color or B/W), wouldn't you be able to identify attribute properly any of the images to the correct book ? Doesn't that tell you that even if some approaches and subjects were shared, each photographer had a unique vision. And of course Robert Adams is even more different.

[Frank Petronio]

Yes they all have their individuality, and I think Nixon essentially broke from the group once he started photographing people close enough that he could talk to them.

I did some of that "me too" work too, just another sheep, which is part of why I reject most of it too. It is just so cold. And, now that so much land has been developed and built, it's very easy to do. I basically see these pictures everyday in real life.