Stephen Shore Interview

[paulr]

http://seesawmagazine.com/shore_pages/shore_interview.html

Lots of great insights and down to earth descriptions of his working process.

[Struan Gray]

In a way, it's in this funny position of being a diary, but it's a diary of a life geared to making photographs. It's a diary of a photographic trip - it's things I'm encountering, but it's also things I'm encountering for the sake of encountering them.

This is one of the 'problems' I have with a lot of so-called documentary photography, where it is pretended that the act of selection in an uninformed or innocent one. Nice to see that Shore is self-aware.

[DDrake]

[/i]

This is one of the 'problems' I have with a lot of so-called documentary photography, where it is pretended that the act of selection in an uninformed or innocent one. Nice to see that Shore is self-aware.

Good interview, although the OP's link didn't work for me. IIRC, in 2014 Shore did yet another version of Uncommon Places, with even more photographs than the 2004 version. That's the one I have.

Not surprised an artist of Shore's experience (and approach to subject matter) is self-aware. What's odd to me is accomplished artists who lack self-awareness, or pretend to. I saw Nan Goldin speak about 20 years ago. She claimed that taking pictures of her friends had no effect whatever on their behavior. Now that we live in the age of the selfie and Instagram, I wonder if she still believes it.

[invisibleflash]

Very good...Thanks!

[Drew Wiley]

Interesting. But if the 20th C could be repeated, the best thing that could ever happen to American Art would be to erase the existence of the likes of Warhol and Lichtenstein. Maybe that phase was a necessary catharsis or fresh start, but now it is itself a stuck record; and I'm sick of it. Just how many thousands of Starbucks do you need anyway? Maybe it would be nice to have something else. 'Scuse my rant; but I got another mailer from the SFMMA soliciting membership to view their upcoming Warhol show? That's like seeing another box of Saltine crackers - there's a shelf of em in every supermarket everywhere. A commodity. I hate it when art becomes commoditized. Wish Shore had not introduced his talk by how he began hanging onto the coat-tails of Warhol. But, otherwise, whew! - he does explain his thought process of composition well. Nothing I haven't heard or read before, but nice to see it in reference to specific exhibited images. But if his thought process actually involved that much deliberate step by step consciousness when he actually took them, they would probably never exist. A bit of a mandatory museum-esque manifesto, it seems. Interesting guy whose work I've always found itself interesting, but nothing all that remarkable. I have enjoyed looking at his work both in books and actual print fashion.

[Drew Wiley]

Back to pontificating. I admire how he admits he had divest himself his NYC way of looking at things when he summered in Montana and was faced with a new challenge. Too bad Avdeon never understood that. Same thing later in the SW. But it apparently took him an entire lifetime to get to how some of us have seen compositional opportunities all along. But to be fair, I'd have to move to NYC and find out if I take meaningful pictures there, which I have zero interest in doing. It's not the center of the universe. The sooner that is realized, the sooner there will be some much needed fresh air.

[johnmsanderson]

Thanks for posting. I saw the exhibit but not this. I like his analogies to other art forms.